


The Shortest Straw

by PatternsInTheIvy



Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, James A+ parenting, Misunderstandings, Psychological Trauma, Sensitive themes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:33:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27085642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatternsInTheIvy/pseuds/PatternsInTheIvy
Summary: If you can build bombs, you can also disarm them. It made sense, yeah.What did not make sense was allowing a guy who had previously “worked” building bombs for a terrorist organization to go on in missions disarming bombs. Jack thought it was a ridiculous idea.No matter what Matty said about being privy to “additional information” that gave her more context.It was a bad idea. It would always be.And he stood by that for a long time. Until the idea began to seem less and less stupid. Jack didn’t even know how that happened, really.Or, in an alternate universe where Mac’s life was very different, things are not exactly as they seem, and secrets and misunderstandings stand in the way of a brilliant partnership for almost too long.
Comments: 57
Kudos: 65
Collections: my_anoncollection





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title is inspired by the homonymous Metallica song. I was listening to it and it just stuck with me, and the lyrics sort of make sense, even if they are not a perfect fit.
> 
> ____________  
> If you got an email saying I posted this today (26/02/2021), know that I did not update anything. I was just messing with an anonymous collection and didn't know that taking my work off anonymous would alert people who are subscribed to me!  
> I'm really sorry (and embarrassed LMAO I swear I know how to use computers.)

Jack had nothing against surprises, most of the time. He'd gotten used to them. He thrived when he had to act - and in the field, you have to react quickly to things, because no op goes a hundred per cent as planned. 

But, you see, Jack knew what he was doing. And as much as he argued with Matty, he usually trusted in her judgement and calls. 

Perhaps not this time. 

This whole operation looked fucked, Jack knew it. Matilda knew it. And Jack knew that Matilda knew that he knew that she knew. Or whatever.

"Seriously, this is ridiculous," Jack said.

"Oversight-" 

"Oversight can go-" Jack started.

"Agent Dalton!" Matilda said, her voice just below a shout. 

Jack sighed, letting his eyes roam to where Riley was sitting, to his right. She was typing furiously, lines and lines of white letters on a black screen. He hoped she was doing something that would change their situation, gathering intel that not even Matty had… anything.

"C'mon, Matty. You have to find this idea the dumbest thing you've ever seen. I don't care what Oversight said. I'm asking about what you think."

Matilda pinched the bridge of her nose, her posture changed a bit, becoming more relaxed, even as tension was evident in her face.

"Look, Jack, I will be frank - as frank as I can be, at least. I share similar reservations about all of this. However, I am privy to additional information," she made a gesture with her hand, stopping him from commenting on that. "I do not have the liberty of discussing that with anyone."

Matilda paused, looking at Riley. 

"You will not find this information anywhere, Riley. It was passed on to me… personally."

Jack snorted. 

Riley did not stop typing, even though her fingers momentarily hesitated. 

"This additional information gives me more context into things. Despite my reservations about Mr MacGyver joining the Phoenix during an operation, I have reason to believe that he might be a valuable asset in this case."

"Matty, he used to build bombs for terrorists. That was six months ago. I don't think he's had a change of heart. I can't believe this."

Jack couldn't believe that the op from six months ago had resulted in this. His team had worked in cooperation with another agency six months ago. Not an uncommon thing, and not difficult either. The other agency had done most of the work, really - they had gone undercover in Poland, tracking a secretive organisation who _employed_ highly trained and specialized technical personnel. In the end, the Phoenix only had the mission of helping in the extraction of one of these employees. One Angus MacGyver, an engineer specialized in building bombs. 

They had had express orders that MacGyver should not, under any circumstances, be killed or seriously injured. 

Looking back, Jack thought that maybe he should have seen this new development coming. It wasn't always that dangerous people like MacGyver were allowed to walk away alive from something like this. There had to be a reason for the concern over his physical integrity.

"This is non-negotiable," Matty said, "Oversight believes that MacGyver is the most adequate person for this mission - and frankly, so do I." 

"And what is this mission, anyway?" Riley asked, closing her laptop and leaving it on the table. 

Yeah, that. Maybe Jack had flipped after Matty had told him who would be on the mission with them, and until now they still had no idea what the mission entailed.

"A drug cartel has suffered a few losses from which it cannot recover. Unfortunately, one of their warehouses is filled with explosives. There might be armed bombs there as well, and we need to clean up the place. Discreetly."

Great. Fucking great. He was going to be sent into a place full of explosives with a guy who liked to build bombs. 

Jack looked at Riley, and he could see that she also didn't look very comfortable with the whole situation.

"Jack, Riley, your mission - as per Oversight's orders - is to watch MacGyver while he searches for any bombs, and while he disarms them, should he find any. You will be there to assure that everything will run smoothly," Matty paused, crossing her arms. "Your job will also entail an… additional report, for me, about Magyver's behaviour and actions. It is unlikely that he will cause problems, but anything unusual - _I_ want to know, do you understand?"

"Perfectly," said Riley. 

"Yes, mam," Jack replied. 

Good, Matty was not going to believe MacGyver blindly. Of course she wasn't. She was being pressured as much as Jack was. 

"Then we are settled. In thirty minutes we will meet in the war room, and MacGyver will join us. Details of the operation will be given to you then."

** ** ** **

When Jack and Riley got to the war room, fifteen minutes before scheduled with Matty, MacGyver was already there. His back was to the door, and he didn't turn around when they entered, both of his arms were on the table, and he had something in his hands - and whatever it was, he put it in his pocket before Riley and Jack even said a word.

Annoyed for having his plan of arriving early ruined, Jack took a seat on the other side of the table, while Riley sat closer to the bombmaker. 

Jack crossed his arms and watched MacGyver. The young man looked, well… young. Riley's age, really. The agent found that he couldn't remember much from MacGyver since the op in Poland. Jack remembered that he had cooperated and never hostilized the agents from the Phoenix, but beyond that there was nothing.

MacGyver kept looking at his hands, and did not raise his head, blond hair falling over his face.

"What did you have in your hands when we got here?" Jack asked.

That made the young man look up. He shrugged. "It was nothing," he replied.

"Really? And why did you feel the need to hide _nothing_ from me, hm?"

"I didn't hide anything."

"You hid it. In your pocket."

Jack, if pressed, would admit that the situation was a bit ridiculous - yes, MacGyver had hidden something, but inside the agency building there was no way that he had something dangerous on him, and he doubted the man was that stupid. Still, he was not letting that go.

"Look here, buddy," Jack said, voice cold despite the words, and waited until MacGyver looked at him. "I don't like having to go on a mission side by side with a boy who used to earn his life by making bombs for terrorists. I don't trust you, and I will act accordingly. So, unless you have a death wish, show me whatever you are hiding - and stop hiding things from me."

MacGyver stared for a few seconds, his expression changing, and contrary to what Jack had expected, he saw no anger in the other's face, just resignation, followed by a deep sigh. Then he reached inside his pocket and pulled out something.

"It's a paperclip," MacGyver said, sliding the metal piece over the table, towards Jack. Then he stood up and left the room, the door clicking softly behind him.

"That went well, huh?" Riley said, picking the paperclip, it was all twisted. She started to twist it more, making it into a spiral. Her tone and the look she gave Jack were full of disapproval.

"Well, he was hiding. And you know who he is, Riley." 

"Jack, I am not saying that we should let our guard down, and I am not even saying that I think you should go easy on him. But you just fought over a paperclip."

"I didn't know it was a paperclip, Riles."

"And what did you think he had in his pocket? An AK-47?" She asked, a laugh in her eyes. "Come on, Jack. We'll have to work with him, and I'd prefer if it went smoothly - or as smoothly as it can go, all things considered. It's Friday, I want to grab a beer when we leave, and relax."

Jack raised his hands in mock surrender. "Fine, Riles. I won't bother the pyromaniac - too much - if you think that threatens your night out."

"I'll hold you to that."

Riley put the paperclip on the table near the chair where MacGyver had been sitting before. Jack looked at the object - sure, he had overreacted, but that was because the blonde had overreacted first. Really, who thinks that hiding a paperclip is necessary?

** ** ** **

The trip to the warehouse was uneventful. Given how simple everything would be, they had no comms besides their telephones. Besides their usual armament, Jack and Riley were carrying rifles loaded with tranquillizers, and MacGyver carried a case with whatever he would need to disarm bombs - the agent hoped they would not need that, but knowing his luck, the expectations were quite low. 

Fifty minutes after leaving the agency, they found themselves leaving the helicopter and walking up to the isolated warehouse. At least, if it came to that, any explosion would leave no casualties. 

When they entered the place, Riley turned on a powerful LED lamp that they'd brought - they were taking no risks with flickers in a place like that. 

"So," MacGyver spoke, for the first time unprompted. "You should not touch things," and even though his posture screamed how uncomfortable he was with the whole situation, his voice did not waver. 

"The only one who makes things explode here is you," Jack said. 

MacGyver scratched his neck and looked down. “Yes, but I am not here to do that today,” he replied. 

“Yes, I guess that someone who knows so well how to blow up things will also know how to stop that, right,” Jack replied, the sarcasm dripping from his voice earned him a dirty look from Riley. "How long do you think it will take?" He asked, trying to change the subject.

"It depends. Right now I am seeing a lot of inflammable material," he gestured, pointing a few gallons of liquid in a corner. "But there are other things back there, and if your people think there might be bombs… if there are, it will depend on how good the person who set them up was. Director Webber suspects this might be a set up for rival Carteis, too."

Yeah, there was that, too. The entire place could contain traps. It was like a cursed pyramid constructed by drug lords.

"So try not to walk around a lot. There might be hidden triggers, pressure plates. If you need to walk, use the same path to go back."

Jack nodded. If the Phoenix was using MacGyver in this, he had to at least be competent - not to mention that incompetence would have led him to a very short life with his previous… employers. And as far as Jack could tell, the man did not seem to have a death wish, so not listening to him on this would be stupid.

"Riley here will be monitoring the movement in the area near us," Jack explained. "The helicopter that brought us will help with that, too. Anything suspicious and we will call for reinforcement, or abort the mission, depending on the situation."

Bomberman nodded and turned around, getting to work. Jack stayed near Riley, and watched.

MacGyver walked slowly, his attention apparently focused on looking for hidden bombs. Jack wondered how many times the other had been on the other side of it all - setting up bombs, instead of deactivating them. He wondered about how many people had died because of said bombs. To tell the truth, MacGyver didn't look like someone who had blood on his hands, and for some reason that annoyed him. 

It wasn't fair that people could hide like that, under innocent façades. If Jack saw MacGyver on the streets, he would assume he was a college student - and really, how old was he? He definitely didn't look old enough to have already graduated and spent a few years supplying terrorists with bombs. 

"This is boring," Jack said, after almost an hour of nothing, wishing he had something to do.

"Shut up, Jack. You'll jinx us. Boring is fine, for this."

"I have to agree with you there."

"He seems to be having some fun, though," Riley said. 

MacGyver seemed to have cleared most of the warehouse floor. No hidden triggers, no pressure plates. He moved more freely, and was writing something on a small notebook, which he set down on the floor before opening a cabinet.

And then he froze. 

"What's going on there, Bomberman?" Jack asked, but he already guessed the answer.

"There's a bomb here," MacGyver said. "I'll need to defuse it…" he stopped. "I don't have a lot of time to do this, and I can't really waste a lot of it to investigate how destructive this will be."

Riley was already talking to Matty, updating their situation. 

"Anyway," MacGyver continued. "If this blows off, with all these things inside, it will be a huge explosion, no matter what," he opened the case he was carrying, taking a few tools out of it. "If you leave now, you will be out of the affected radius."

Jack blinked, and Riley, who was now typing furiously in the computer, stopped and looked up, meeting Jack's eyes, a frown on her face.

Forget about MacGyver not having a death wish.

"This is an isolated place, there will be no casualties," Bomberman continued.

"How much time do you have exactly?" Riley asked, and Jack was grateful that that seemed to interrupt whatever it was that MacGyver was going to say next. 

"A bit less than ten minutes," he said. "It's not a very sophisticated mechanism, and I'm positive I can defuse it, the only problem is the time, really," he added, never looking back. MacGyver’s attention was entirely focused on the bomb. 

MacGyver continued to work, and Jack went out of the warehouse. He called Matty immediately.

"He says he can defuse it, but that he's worried about the time, he has less than ten minutes - less than nine now, I guess."

" _Get the hell out, then, Jack. The warehouse is isolated, and there will be no casualties. The priority was leaving nothing for rival carteis, and it’s not like they can use explosives that already exploded._ "

"Alright."

" _And Jack?_ "

"Yes?"

" _MacGyver might give you trouble to leave. Use the tranquillizer if you need, but bring him back._ "

"Will do that."

He went back inside. 

"We are leaving," he said, and Riley stood up, gathering her computer and the rest of her things. "Come MacGyver."

"I am not going," he replied. "I have to defuse it."

Jack sighed. Really, he would rather not do this, despite what he thought of the other man. But they were out of time, and he had orders to bring the man back. Wasting no time, he just walked up to where Bomberman was, waited until he was not touching any part of the bomb, pointed his rifle and shot a tranquillizer dart at his shoulder.

MacGyver startled, and Jack quickly held his body before he slumped over the bomb.

"Wha-" MacGyver slurred. 

Whatever was in the dart was potent, and in less than ten seconds, the blonde was already unconscious. 

Jack hurriedly picked him up, only glancing at the ominous timer. It marked 7:47. Plenty of time for them to get the hell away from that warehouse. He carried MacGyver out. The helicopter already waited for them fifty meters away. 

"What the hell was that?" Riley screamed over the noise of the helicopter.

"Bomberman has zero self-preservation instincts, by the looks of it. I’m glad we were prepared for that."

“Yeah, somehow I think MacGyver would have liked even less to be dragged away awake than unconscious.”

Besides the pilot, there was a medic in the helicopter. Dr Phillips, if Jack remembered it correctly. 

“How did he get hurt?” Phillips asked, kneeling beside MacGyver.

“It was a tranquillizer dart,” Jack replied, “Bomberman here wanted to remain back and disarm the bomb, even though he wasn’t sure if he could do it in that short time.”

Dr Phillip’s eyes widened slightly as she took in Jack’s words, but then she quickly nodded and continued to check on MacGyver. 

“Matty wants to see us when we get back,” Riley said. 

Jack nodded, he already expected that, the additional report on MacGyver apparently was a priority for Webber. 

Well, it wasn’t like there was a lot to say, right? Bomberman didn’t care about whatever happened to him - or he trusted his skill too much. But he also had said that he wasn’t sure if he could deactivate the bomb in time, so the first option was more likely.

In a way, Jack could understand that logic. MacGyver had spent the last six months doing God knows what… but those months must not have been pleasant. With a past like that, and on the hands of the Phoenix, his life was fucked forever. Despite whatever sort of deal he had done with “Oversight”. 

Yet, for some reason, this bothered Jack. It shouldn’t - and he would not look into the why - but he thought it was somehow sad to watch that happen in front of his eyes. 

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mac overthinks things a bit, and makes a deal - sort of - with Matty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ADDITIONAL WARNINGS for this chapter:  
> It’s very mild, but there is a brief discussion of suicide. No character is suicidal in the story, but a sort of misunderstanding involving that happens.

Waking up in medical, the first memory that came to his mind was the image of the timer counting down. For a brief, suffocating moment, he thought that the worst had happened. But that instant soon ended, as Mac attention snapped to his own body. He was uninjured - no burns, no deep bruising that resulted from explosion pressure. There was an IV inserted in his arm, and although he felt the weirdness that told him he’d been given drugs, he didn’t think there were drugs on that drip.

If that IED had blown, he wouldn’t be uninjured, he wouldn’t be in a hospital at all.

So that meant that something else had happened. He didn’t remember anything beyond assessing the bomb, and thinking that he wasn’t sure if he could do it in time. He remembered telling Dalton and Davis that much.

And then nothing.

A nurse entered his room.

“Good afternoon,” she said.

“Good afternoon,” he replied, voice hoarse, his throat parched. “What time is it?”

“It’s just past noon. You’ve slept for the last twenty hours.”

Mac frowned. Why was he given something that made him sleep that long? What had happened to the IED?

“I’ll remove the IV,” the nurse said, stopping beside his bed. “You were down with some powerful tranquillisers, we were just keeping you hydrated while you slept through the drugs,” she explained. “Do you think you can eat?”

Mac felt no hunger, all that time gone without a meal meant that he was past the point of feeling hungry. Still, he nodded mechanically. Tranquillisers - but why and how?

“I’ll bring you a meal, then,” the nurse said as she finished removing the IV, closing the small puncture of the needle with an adhesive dressing.

While he waited, Mac found that his phone had been left at a table beside the bed. He checked, found only a message from Matty, sent two minutes ago and telling him to meet her in her office in two hours.

On the table there were also a few of his paperclips. Most of them twisted into shapeless metal. He reached for them, and almost kept one on his hands, to distract him, but decided against it, putting all the paperclips in his pocket.

** ** ** **

“You didn’t let me try,” Mac said, trying to keep the frustration out of his voice.

_Matty had been thinking about the whole mission. Your priority was to avoid that other cartels got those explosives._

“Agent Dalton relayed to me that you said you weren’t sure if you could defuse the IED,” Matty replied.

“I just wanted to make sure that Dalton and Davis would get out of there, in case I couldn’t defuse the IED.”

_It had been a lapse of judgement, saying that aloud._

Matty gave him a look that Mac couldn’t decipher.

“I had orders, and I needed to make sure that everyone would come back from that mission,” she said. “And what would you have done, Angus? Would you have remained behind, trying to disable the IED until the last minute? Did you expect agents Dalton and Davis to follow through with something like that? Or that I would allow that to happen?”

 _Or that Oversight would_ \- that went unsaid.

“I wouldn’t have stayed there,” Mac replied, annoyed at what Webber was getting at. “I wasn’t trying to kill myself, if that's what you mean. I just could have tried more, that’s all.”

“I was not worried about that,” she replied softly, she reached the drawer of her desk and pulled out a manilla folder. On the cover, Mac could see his name. “You are not suicidal - that concern has long been cleared during your evaluations.”

Had it? Well, that was unexpected. Maybe he wouldn’t need to go through so many sessions any more.

“However, Dr. Ullmann has expressed concern over your apparent… desire to prove that you are capable of doing what we ask of you, sometimes in detriment of your own integrity.”

Mac said nothing in reply, feeling like he was being observed under the unforgiving light and magnifying lenses of a microscope.

_The ocular lenses are the ones that are directed to the viewer. They produce a virtual magnified image from the real image that is produced by the objective lenses. The diaphragm regulates the amount of light…_

“You don’t have to prove anything,” again that soft voice.

Mac snorted in disbelief. “Right, and that’s why you have me going through all these interviews.”

_Trying to make sure that I am not about to blow up the building and kill everyone here. Trying to make sure that I won’t kill myself._

“I am capable of doing my job,” Mac said. _I need to do this_. “That IED… I won’t tell you that I am sure that I could disarm it in time, but I still had time to try. I just wanted to make sure that the agents knew that we might need to get out of there really quick. It was just… communication.”

Matty nodded. “I can accept that, but the next time something like this happens, you have to make your intentions clearer. I need to make sure that all missions go as well as possible, and I can’t have agents risking their lives beyond what is acceptable,” she paused. “I’d like to discuss something else - have you thought about the proposal to work in R&D?”

Mac shook his head. “I prefer going out, being in the field,” nevermind that he wasn’t a field agent, and just acted as a consultant when they had any explosive related problem.

“I am aware of that. Oversight-”

“I won’t do it.” No matter what Oversight said.

Being out in the field defusing bombs was very different from what he had been doing for the last three years - the same couldn’t be said from working on R&D.

Matty nodded. “I suggest you go home, now. Rest.”

“Did you think about what I asked?” Mac asked.

Webber straightened in her chair. “Yes. I am still against you going from a consultant into a field agent. No, let me finish,” she added, when Mac started to speak. “Your arguments are not completely without reason, and I agree with many of them. However, I don’t think you are ready for that. Psychologically - and even physically speaking. And even if I agreed with you, the decision of changing your status inside this agency is out of my hands. Right now, Oversight is even less inclined than I am to consider your request.

"I have the reports of the agents with whom you went on missions. They are all positive. Your ability to deal with IEDs, your knowledge of explosive substances and combinations is something highly valuable in those missions. The way you dealt with the doors during the op with Agents Cage, and your solution to the boat issue in that island with Agents Garcia and Simon's were praised."

Mac wondered what she was getting at.

"I am not comfortable in having an agent that depends on those methods to carry out a mission and come back alive. But I can recognize how that could be useful. I am not making any promises, but if you continue to have success on the mission you work as a consultant, I will re-evaluate your request, and _if_ I change my mind, I will do my best to convince him that changing your status is the best course of action."

Mac nodded, thankful that Matty would even consider that. "Thank you, Director Webber," he said.

"Don't thank me yet, Angus. And it is Matty, remember?"

"Yeah, sorry. You could call me Mac, then. I prefer that."

Matty nodded. "Then it is all set. Go home, rest. I will call you when I need you. And Mac? Don't beat yourself over that IED. Despite that, remember that the goal was achieved and the mission was successful."

** ** ** **

Sometimes Mac wondered if his life was always supposed to go like this.

Not that he believed in fate, no. It was simply a matter of thinking, analysing and concluding whether or not he’d done his best to not end up where he was. Honestly, he wasn’t sure which answer to that question would bother him more.

Not that he would complain about it - he didn’t have that right.

(And it wasn’t as if he had anyone who would be willing to listen to him, even if during a lapse he dared go there...)

But he wondered, he couldn’t help the way his thoughts sometimes escaped his control and took shapes that shouldn’t be. And in the last months, those moments of imagination and possibilities and something else that he would distantly acknowledge as _yearning_ had become more frequent.

It was a powerful and unavoidable consequence of leaving Poland, and living through a new routine, and having psychologists and Matilda Webber asking him questions. A collateral effect of coming back.

(And sometimes, in those really bad moments, he wondered if he really came back, if there was anything that remained still _him_ to come back at all.)

It was a funny thing - though it brought him no joy - that he was so good at using the resources in his environment to improvise his way out of problems, but there was no way out of _this_ life. He couldn’t simply apply the laws of Physics, or mix up chemicals and solve this.

Although… yeah, he’d failed at those things too - and others - hadn’t he? So what followed was just a consequence of his failure.

Maybe his life was supposed to be like this, after all.

Still, he was trying for more, maybe he was using the wrong approach, but that was the only one he knew, and if didn’t have that, then… then he would be completely lost, wouldn’t he? Drifting in a sea where he wouldn’t be able to hack his way out.

And that was why he went on the missions assigned by _Director Webber_ , and why he put up with the interminable psych evaluations, and all those _questions_ that left him asking himself answers long after he’d replied something else to those people.

That was why he was using what he knew for something good. That was why he didn’t mind working with spies who had every reason to distrust him, and acted in a way that supported that distrust.

The first mission Mac worked on was not a field one. Instead, from the war room, he’d guided the agents who were doing a final cleanup in _that building_ in Poland. He helped them navigate rooms where there were IEDs constructed by him, half-finished aberrations that would never be detonated - his only comfort, in all of this - and that exposed the truth of what he was capable of doing, and what he’d already done.

And then he went on a few field missions with different agents, and he defused bombs, which reminded him of a time when things were, not easier, but at least, clearer.

People watched him like hawks, those first few times, with reason. His talent in cutting fuses, or otherwise disabling bombs by removing the explosives or detonators served to decrease the frequency he got those looks. And, in the times that they needed it, his improvising their way out also helped.

He knew that people talked. His reputation was slowly improving.

And then the whole thing with Dalton and Davis happened.

He had not gone on a mission with that particular team yet, and there was no reason for those agents to trust him or his skills. And then that IED happened.

Davis had been wary of Mac, but Dalton had been outright hostile, if the paperclip situation was anything to go by. It wasn't the first time he got that sort of reaction from Phoenix agents, and it wouldn't be the last. What bothered him the most was that he'd failed. If he had to work with that particular team again, he would be a joke, and they wouldn't take him seriously.

And Mac found out that Matty had been prepared for the day he would fail - and a very particular sort of failure, at that. That stung.

But Matty had also made a compromise, she was willing to trust him a bit more. He had one more thing to look forward to.

The clock on the table beside his bed marked 3:47 A.M. but he doubted that he would get any sleep - actually, he had drunk almost an entire jar of coffee in the hopes of that happening.

His hands reached for a paperclip near the watch. For the first time in a long while, he was able to twist the metal into something more than just shapeless forms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts?
> 
> This chapter was a part of a bigger, later chapter. But then I realized that this later chapter was already too long, and that posting a Mac POV chapter right now would be better, so I thought this chapter was more adequate than the original chapter 2.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things get better, people get shot, there is a rescue mission, Matty and Riley make Jack tone down his attitude, Jack has a moment of introspection, Mac causes a few explosions, and things get worse - and weird. Not necessarily in that order.

"Matty, you told us that MacGyver wouldn't cause problems," Jack said. 

Webber looked totally unimpressed by Jack's words. 

"And you want me to believe that shooting him with tranquilisers was some sort of sacrifice for you, Jack?" She said, shaking her head. "And what I meant was that MacGyver was unlikely to provoke an explosion, taking your and Riley's lives in the process - our psychologists approved his presence there."

"Well, he sure looked like he wouldn't mind turning into ash there and then."

"Yes, I had expected that, and prepared accordingly," Matty replied, her voice with the tone of ‘I don’t know why you are saying this.”

They remained in silence for a few minutes. Jack wanted to ask, he really did. What was Matty's interest in all of this? If she was sure that MacGyver wouldn't kill her agents, why would she worry about him like that?

Besides, it was a one-time thing…

Groaning, he stared at Matty. 

"No."

"No what, Jack?" 

"I don’t want him near my team again, Matty."

Matty said nothing, and her face betrayed no emotion, but Jack was sure that she was enjoying this. 

Yeah, saddle Jack Dalton with the fucking guy who makes things explode, because Jack cannot do anything about it. Fuck Oversight.

"Angus MacGyver is not a trained agent, and so he will not follow you on every mission. However, should another situation where his skills will be useful come up, of course he will go. He will be working with all of our teams, but if you think that he should have a more permanent placement with you and Rile-"

"I did not say that, Matty!"

And now Jack really wanted to ask. Well, there wasn't any harm in asking - the worst that would happen was that Matty would refuse to answer.

"So, Matty… how did this guy not get killed?" 

Phoenix Foundation might resort less to that sort of permanent solution than other agencies, but they also did their share of eliminating targets that were too dangerous to be left alive. Specialised technicians who had - probably - been compromised one way or another were an example.

What made Oversight think that it wasn't a risk to let Angus MacGyver live? Jack wasn't advocating that, but it was how things were run, usually. Besides, a second agency had been involved, that day. That meant that too many people had decided that an unusual outcome like that was the best one...

Matty shook her head, her expression changing to the one she used when people suggested something that was too ridiculous to contemplate.

"Oversight had no reason to believe that MacGyver would be uncooperative."

Jack narrowed his eyes. 

"Was MacGyver being forced to build bombs?" 

He didn't think so. When they had stormed that building in Poland, there was no indication that MacGyver was being held as a prisoner. Instead, he was found in a lab, working alone on whatever explosive aberration he was putting together.

"I am not authorized to discuss Angus MacGyver's past with anyone."

"Was he tortured, Matty?" Jack asked. "Because if he was, you know that he might be compromised."

Compromised in ways that went beyond what they were prepared to deal with. It made the guy a ticking bomb - pun intended.

Jack really wanted that to not be the case, for obvious reasons.

"Or do you think he's still a terrorist and the agency is leading him on? Are we double agents here, Matty?"

"As I said, I cannot discuss MacGyver's past with you or anyone else," Matty repeated. “Jack, do you really think that you can make me talk?” she asked in the same tone that he suspected she would use with a five-year-old. “Please, stop this. It’s embarrassing to watch.”

It was infuriating that, when Matty wanted, she could keep any emotion whatsoever from her face and her voice. He wasn't any closer to finding out the answer to his question. 

"Should you need to work with MacGyver again, his past should not be a concern."

"I am not concerned at all."

"Well, then you can go. I still need to talk with Riley." 

Jack left the office. Maybe things would be fine, and he would not need to work with MacGyver again. 

Ha.

Two weeks later - much, much sooner than he would have liked - Jack wondered if he had jinxed things simply by having that mere hopeful thought.

** ** ** **

The day had started fine.

Scratch that, the day had started fantastically. Jack had slept for the entire seven hours - something that had not happened in recent years. 

He was having a nice cup of coffee when his phone rang. Matty. 

"Jack, we have an emergency. It's a rescue mission."

What a way to start a day.

In all his years as a Delta, CIA and now at Phoenix Foundation, Jack had always felt something different in rescue missions. Objectively, he knew that rescuing other agents was not something more important than the rest of the work. But try as he might, he couldn't not think of rescuing colleagues as something different. 

Not to mention that it reminded him of the times that he himself - or worse, Riley - had needed to be rescued.

Less than thirty minutes later, Jack was entering the war room. Matty and Riley were already there, discussing.

"Matty, Riley."

"Jack," Matty replied, while Riley just nodded in acknowledgement and typed furiously on the computer and spoke something - and only then he noticed that she was talking with someone over comms.

"There is little we can do to find them using a radio signal that is this diffuse and inconstant," Riley said. "I am trying to triangulate their position based on the last GPS coordinates I have from you."

Matty gave Jack a tablet, and while he scrolled through the pages of a document, she summed up the situation.

"Our team is trapped in a facility in Argentina. They were supposed to extract a sophisticated explosive device coupled with a triggering software based on facial recognition. Getting inside the facility was a success, but the information we had was faulty. An emergency alarm system was activated, their presence was detected and they were taken as prisoners, and then transported to another location, which remains unknown."

Jack nodded. "Who is the team?" 

"Marie and Adam," Jack grimaced. He had his differences with Marie, and Adam could be a pain in the ass, but that didn't really matter now. "And Angus MacGyver was with them as well. Ivan, their computer specialist, is safe at a hotel, though, and helping us locate the rest of his team."

"MacGyver? What was he doing there?" He only half registered the rest, his brain focusing on the fact that Bomberman was out there in the field, and coincidentally, with a team that needed a rescue.

"The job he was assigned," Matty replied curtly. "You and Riley will go - I am short on agents right now. Ivan has tracked the people who are keeping our agents prisoners, and he is also watching the facility. Apparently, the device is still in the same place. Another team will be sent there and we will coordinate an attack there with a simultaneous rescue. The people we are dealing with will be forced to divide their human resources."

"Are you sure that MacGyver is not causing all these problems?" 

"For the last time. What kind of idiot do you take me for, Jack?"

"Sorry, Matty."

"If anything, Adam and Marie are alive only because of MacGyver. Whatever concerns you have, keep them to yourself now, and  _ don’t _ insinuate that I’d be so stupid as to allow an obvious menace to the integrity of my agents."

"Matty," Riley interrupted, saving Jack from having to answer. "I've got their position. It's a ten miles radius area, Ivan will work on eliminating a few of the places for now, but we will also try to come up with something to automate this process."

Matty nodded and checked her phone. "It’s all set then. You will take the jet in ten minutes. Contact me as soon you have their location," she said and pointedly looked at Jack, daring him to say anything.

Well, despite everything, he would pass that chance of getting fired for now.

It all passed in a blur, and Jack found himself sitting in one of the seats in the jet. Riley was discussing something with Ivan - apparently they were dividing the work, trying to narrow down the location of his team.

They couldn’t even plan their strategy in advance - not until Ivan and Riley had the exact location of where the team was being kept. Which left Jack with some time to read the contents of the file Matty had given him in more detail. But a nagging question was in the back of his mind.

What had Matty meant when she said that Adam and Marie were only alive because of MacGyver?

“Riley, did you get in touch with Adam and Marie? I mean, directly.” 

“No. Ivan said that they contacted him via radio.”

“Yes, but how?” no comm piece would remain on them - their captors would have taken those away.

Riley only briefly looked away from the screen. “From what Ivan has said, MacGyver created a radio out of some… stuff he found where they are being kept. But they have little power to keep steady communication, so Ivan will only contact them again in two hours - or they will talk to him if their situation changes.”

Well, that didn’t explain why they were alive because of MacGyver.

Jack nodded. “And what is their situation?” 

“They aren’t terribly hurt. Adam might have a mild concussion, but beyond that they are okay. For now.”

“Do you know what Matty meant with them only being alive because of MacGyver?” 

“Something about an IED,” Riley murmured, and then she was talking about something else - clearly in a conversation with Ivan, if the computer jargon was anything to go by.

_ Something about an IED _ . So maybe Bomberman had - this time - disarmed a bomb successfully. 

** ** ** **

In the end, Ivan and Riley came up with something, and they had a precise location. 

And that was how they ended up inside a car a few blocks away from a church. A big, sort of isolated church that reminded Jack of _ End of Days _ , only they weren't about to fight the Devil - and he couldn't tell if that made their situation better or worse.

With no security cameras nearby or in the church itself, Riley had had little info about the place before they were forced to personally check the current status of the location. All they knew was that the agents were being kept somewhere in that patch of holy ground. 

“Do we look like the religious type, Riley?” Jack asked. 

Riley rolled her eyes. 

They had comms on - their team, Matty, and Ivan. 

And now that they were in reach of MacGyver's radio, direct communication was possible.

"We - ah, MacGyver - had an idea," Marie said. "The place where we are is sort of a deposit. There are lots of seemingly innocuous chemicals here," her voice had a humorous edge. "MacGyver says he can mix some stuff and create another distraction, but we will need to coordinate that with you guys getting into the church."

"What kind of distraction?" Matty asked. 

"It's mostly just something that will cause irritation in the eyes and throat," another voice - MacGyver's - said. "It will disperse fast, though."

"We will try to get them to open the door - if they do, they will get this mixture in their faces and you come and shoot them," Adam said. 

On paper, it seemed easy. But there was a lot of room for things to go wrong. 

"You're going to spray detergent on their faces and hope they don't shoot you, while we do all the work, that what you mean?" Jack said. "And we don't even know what's behind the doors of this church."

"I think we just explicitly said that we want to help you in getting us out, so I don't know what you mean about doing all the work, Dalton," Marie replied.

"Do your thing, then, MacGyver," Matty said, before anything else could be said. Her tone of voice resigned, and Jack wondered what that meant. "But wait for our sign."

A long half-hour later had the coordinated attacks happening. The team at the facility started five minutes before, and not long after that, Jack and Riley were storming the church.

Which looked very… churchy. And empty. They spread around, looking for false walls or trapdoors that led to secret rooms. There was little to no clues that the place was used for more than prayers and masses. 

Until the shots began, of course. Jack was pretty sure that those were not sounds usually listened inside the church. 

The two of them ran in the direction of the shots, which came from behind the altar, where there was a - they had finally found it - trapdoor. The sound of bullets hitting metal ceased for a few seconds, and then only the screams in Spanish remained.

While Jack was dealing with the trapdoor, Riley was covering for them in case someone got in by the front door.

"¡Abre abre abre la puerta!" Someone screamed, and between his rusty Spanish and the muffled voices, that was the only thing Jack could understand.

"I think we should go now, they are distracted by the door," Jack said. He had to admit that this had been a good idea, but if they took too long, this would turn into a bad one - he was sure that whoever was holding the agents captive would not, at all, enjoy getting outsmarted by someone using cleaning supplies. He surely wouldn’t. 

"Riley, come here," Jack said. "I'll open the door on three, and you cover" he instructed when Riley approached.

Jack lifted the door - really, these people were not expecting anyone to come, there wasn’t any sort of security to stop him from opening the door. Riley pointed her gun, but there wasn’t anyone on the other side.

"Ok, let's go," Jack said, taking a deep breath and looking down. 

Five men were pressing against a metal door, and a bit of smoke filled a narrow corridor, it irritated Jack's eyes, a burning sensation making him tear up, and he immediately came back up.

"They are distracted, yeah. And whatever Bomberman did, it worked, my eyes sting like a bitch. And there are five of them."

Riley jumped down first, and then Jack. Before the men could react, three of them were already down, and the other two who tried to shoot back met the same fate.

"Come on, guys, hurry, there's movement of cars going in your direction," Ivan said. 

The door was opened, and then Marie, Adam and Bomberman got out. They had to jump over the bodies that were stacked in their way. All in all, despite a few bruises here and there, they looked ok. 

"We've got company," Jack said. 

At that, Adam and Marie picked up the guns that were lying beside the bodies. MacGyver did not - and really, that was odd, but Jack preferred it that way. Though, apparently the guy didn't need anything other than cleaning supplies to be dangerous.

"Guys, two cars, three minutes away," Ivan said. 

They made it out of the church and into the car before company arrived, but not soon enough to avoid getting tailed. 

Jack was driving, and MacGyver was in the passenger's seat while the three other agents were in the back. Mercifully, there was no heavy traffic, and all they had to worry about was the bullets raining down on them, as the cars approached. 

"Man, I love a good car chase and shooting," Marie shouted. 

“And I love being alive,” Jack replied, though yeah, he too could appreciate that sort of action sometimes.

“Come on Dalton, just because you got to be the driver here it doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t get to have fun.”

“Hey, what are you doing?” Jack asked MacGyver when the blond started to remove the tires that held a fire extinguisher to the car floor. He opened the glove compartment and found a lighter.

“I need a knife,” Bomberman said, instead of replying. “And a few bullets.”

“Whatever for?” Jack screamed, and then he saw Riley dropping an entire magazine and a knife on MacGyver’s lap.

“I don’t really have time to open more bullets and make something better, but this,” he pointed at the fire extinguisher, “will block their vision for a few seconds and you will have a clear shot at their tires.” 

Painstakingly, MacGyver opened four bullets using the knife, while Jack drove the three agents in the backseat fired. Finally, after a few minutes, Bomberman put the propellant powder inside the noose of the fire extinguisher and - well, Jack supposed that he really should have seen that coming, but it was still a shock to see it happening. 

“What the hell?” Jack shouted as MacGyver opened the door, lighted a piece of cloth, stuffed it inside the noose and almost fell off the car throwing the fire extinguisher away. 

The car that followed them was hit, and the fire extinguisher exploded, the windshield was taken by white smoke and foam, and that was all they needed. The three agents shot against the tires, and the car that followed them spun around, colliding against the one behind it. 

“Matty, we stopped them. We are getting to exfil,” Riley said, relief tinged her voice. 

Jack glanced back and saw that, in general, relief was the reaction. No one seemed disturbed by the fact that MacGyver had almost got them killed. He could have got Riley killed, and that was unacceptable.

“You could have killed us, MacGyver,” Jack said. 

“I knew what I was doing!”

“If you’d dropped that fucking fire extinguisher one second later, it would have exploded inside our car!”

“Yes, it would. But I didn’t, did I? I said I knew what I was doing!”

“I don’t care what you think you are doing, I won’t let you endanger the lives of agents with some crazy ide-”

“Come on, Dalton,” Marie said.

“No, Marie, we don’t need to carry a former terrorist with us to increase the risk of something going wrong.”

“Come on Jack, let it rest,” Riley said, this time. Her voice tired and with an edge of frustration.

It was one of those situations in which Jack could admit, if only to himself, that he was being childish - again. And he was being a hypocrite, too. Yes, what MacGyver had done was incredibly risky, but things like those had to be done in the field sometimes. Jack himself had made decisions in the spur of the moment. And he could even admit that the guy was resourceful enough to pull that off. Were the situation different, he was sure that he’d been actually impressed. 

Yet, those were things that Jack admitted only to himself, so he decided to just “let it rest”. Silence reigned for a few seconds, and it was broken by Bomberman himself when he muttered a “shit” and started to remove the belt off his trousers. 

Jack looked down at MacGyver’s legs - and there it was, a dark red stain seeping through the fabric of his pant leg. 

Oh, great. Now that. 

MacGyver was already tying his belt around his leg, near his knee, in a makeshift tourniquet. 

“Matty, how long until exfil?” Jack asked. “Bomberman was shot.”

MacGyver glared at Jack when he heard the nickname, but before he could say anything, Adam was squeezing himself between the two seats in the front, stretching his neck and trying to see how bad the blonde was hurt. 

“Shit,” he said as MacGyver cut the fabric of his pant leg exposing the wound. 

It wasn’t the worst gunshot wound that Jack had seen, not even close. But still, it was more than just a graze.

“ _ What is his situation? _ ” Matty asked. Then, voice rising a bit. “ _ Jack, there were complications with the team that breached the facility, our medics are busy there.” _

“Tell her that by the amount of blood, I don’t think the bullet hit an artery,” MacGyver said, “it’s just a lot of muscle affected. I can see the exit wound,” he hissed, pausing a few seconds to breath. 

“He was hit in the leg. It probably didn’t hit any major artery,” Jack replied, agreeing with MacGyver’s initial assessment. He’d seen people bleed hella fast when the bullets did hit a major vase, and it was much, much uglier than that. 

Riley - the only other person who also had comms on - explained the medic situation to MacGyver.

“I can travel,” MacGyver said. “Tell Matty not to bother with trying to get me to a local hospital.”

“He’s saying he doesn’t need a hospital,” Jack said. Well, given that they were in a place where they shouldn’t be, nothing short of an immediate life-threatening injury would get any of them to a hospital. 

“ _ I’m calling you Riley, put me on speaker, _ ” Matty said. 

A few seconds later Matty’s voice could be heard from the speakers. 

“ _ Mac, how bad is it? _ ”

Jack raised his eyebrows at the name. He had no idea what MacGyver preferred to be called, though he could see why he might not be the biggest fan of his first name - seriously, it was a hamburger name, for God’s sake. And Jack was sure that he would have made jokes about that, if the situation between them wasn’t so hostile. 

“It is not life-threatening, Matty” MacGyver replied, his voice had a mechanic, almost robotic quality. “The bullet is not lodged in the muscle - there is an exit wound. It’s obvious that it didn’t hit any bone. And, I am not bleeding much.”

Well, that was a relative thing - sure, MacGyver wasn’t about to bleed out like a slaughtered pig because of a severed artery. Still, there was a lot of blood running down. 

“You can’t keep that tourniquet through the flight,” Jack said.

“Yes, but I can get a few stitches in the jet,” MacGyver replied.

“ _ You keep me updated. Anyone else hurt? Adam, are you concussed?” _

“It’s nothing serious, Matty. I’ll have a killing headache - already have it, actually - but that’s all. I am fine - now, the same can’t be said about the asshole who pistol-whipped me,” he added, squeezing MacGyver’s shoulder and turning around to grin at Marie. There was a story there, but Jack wasn’t in the mood to pry it from any of the people who knew it.

** ** ** ** 

Because Jack sort of felt bad about shouting at someone with a bleeding bullet wound - even if said someone was MacGyver, who could have gotten them killed - he avoided the man during their flight back. People helped Bomberman stitch and dress the wound. At one point, even Riley was there, checking his status. 

But just because he wasn’t fussing over Bomberman, it didn’t mean that Jack was oblivious to what was happening. Namely, the fact that MacGyver had expected that he himself would be doing the stitches on his leg. He hadn’t said anything - but the way he’d got the supplies, prepared things, and especially the surprise on his face when Marie had approached and opened the package where the needle and thread were contained said it all.

Sure, sometimes you had to stitch yourself - if you were lucky and could reach the wound, and were in any condition to actually do the work - but that MacGyver would expect that, when other four people who could do that for him were there was… odd. And it told Jack that stitching himself was something that probably had happened in Bomberman’s past. 

And well, the guy was young - too young to have done what he had done. Jack thought back to Matty’s words, and her request that he trusted her. 

Jack knew that her work wasn’t easy, and that she sometimes needed to find balance between what she judged to be the best course of action and what the elusive Oversight wanted done. The MacGyver situation might not be a result of Matty’s design, but well, Jack knew Matilda Webber for a long time to know that she wouldn’t put up with someone who was a risk to the agency. And he had to give Oversight - whoever the guy or gal was - some credit, too.

“You’re making the official Jack Dalton Thinking Face,” Riley said, taking the seat beside him.

“I don’t have a face like that.”

“You absolutely have one. It’s just not one that anyone gets to see much.”

“Now what do you mean with that, Riley? I’ll have you know that I am a great, deep thinker. I could philosophize for hours...”

Riley laughed. “Yeah, a great thinker firing a Glock, or sniping people, or punching people, sure,” she paused. “And, right now, you’re thinking too much. You know I’m joking, but seriously, Jack. You’re overthinking.”

Jack shrugged. 

“We’ve worked with people with shady pasts - even shadier than what’s normal for a covert agency - before,” Riley said. “Hell, I have a shady past.”

“That’s different,” Jack protested immediately. In his book, there were  _ crimes _ and  _ wrong things _ , and not always they were the same. In his book, what Riley and MacGyver did were things very, very different.

“Maybe it is,” Riley said. “But you never got so riled up before. I mean - do you remember when we had to work with that guy from the Bratva?”

Jack snorted, he remembered that, okay? And he also remembered that the bastard had walked away free because of some deal he’d made in exchange for his help.

“I trust Matty in this. And they,” she made a slight gesture pointing at the other agents, who were a bit away from them, near the seat where MacGyver was. “Well, say what you will, but MacGyver has been doing a great job, from what they just told me. Also, I am pretty sure that you don’t want to make an enemy out of someone like him. And a quarter of our missions involve explosives, or bombs or whatever it is that he’s good at. Just don’t rush into things, and please, don’t complicate them.”

Jack nodded. Truth was - he had a guess about why MacGyver bothered him so much. 

Before he’d found this last job, Jack had worked as an overwatch for EOD techs in Afghanistan, and while he had never lost one of those bomb nerds he was assigned to, he’d seen a few good men and women dying because they had been trying to deal with IEDs. And now MacGyver was a face he had to place on all those past, faceless, enemies.

But compartmentalizing was a must in the business, and really, it was a bit shameful that he’d let MacGyver’s past get the better of him. If Jack continued on that path, he knew that he would clash with Matty - protesting against the guy’s presence was the same as questioning her judgement - and he didn’t want to worry Riley even more. Damn, he’d dragged the kid into this life, the only way he had to get her out of prison, and he wouldn’t make her worry about him. He was supposed to protect and worry about her, and not the other way around. 

Resting his head against the seat, Jack discreetly looked at the other four people. Marie and Adam were deeply concentrated in a game of chess - really, what the fuck those two were even doing? Although, of all the post-missions decompressing techniques that he’d seen people using, that one wasn’t even in the top 10 strangest list. Ivan was playing some game that involved dragging cards around the screen of his computer, although he alternated that with a screen where he was working on a block of code. 

MacGyver was sitting still, his injured leg propped up in the seat in front of him. He was looking out of the window, a paperclip on his hands. He had twisted the metal into something that looked like a spaceship out of a sci-fi movie. Inoffensive enough.

“Don’t worry, Riley. I will try not to cause problems. You and Matty wouldn’t let me live that down, anyway.”

“You can bet on that,” She replied, and then put on headphones and turned on the music so loud that Jack could hear through them.

He could play nice, but if at some point things went to hell, he absolutely would be there to say "I told you!"

** ** ** **

Working as a secret agent had its upsides and downsides.

Upside: getting to punch some assholes and get paid for that. 

Downside: when Jack wasn’t allowed to punch some posh, psychotic, annoying asshole. 

And the guy in front of him now had a very punchable face - really, it was such a waste. 

To be honest, he wasn’t sure why Matilda had brought him into this - the line of interrogation needed was much more the thing of people like Samantha Cage, and not him. 

Although… from the way things were going, maybe Matty had brought Jack along so that he could play the role of the good cop. 

Matty Webber could be terrifying like that. 

Only, this particular guy didn’t seem fazed by her. And as much as she was good at this, Jack knew that, up until now, they had no solid leverage against him. And they had no idea of what he was doing, and why he’d asked to talk with them.

A hired assassin who didn’t even have a name, identified only as Suspect 218 by the CIA. A master of disappearing and leaving no traces behind him. A trail of death left wherever he’d been. A psycho who acted like some version of the Joker that had gone wrong.

Well, they surely had recovered more than an explosive device and software in Argentina. 

“Suspect 218,” the guy said, voice just on the side of annoyingly high. “Don’t you find that a bit dehumanizing, Director Webber?” 

“I find it appropriate for you.”

Suspect 218 laughed. Not one of his creepy - well, creepier - laughs that sounded staged for the sole purpose of unsettling any audience. No, he laughed as if he’d just heard one of the most absurd things in his entire damned life. 

“Do you know what is the strongest instinct that drives animals, Matilda?” He asked, his hands - tied to the table by chains - rising, wrists upwards. “Survival. Oh, we certainly have things to appreciate other than the bestial impulse to simply… live on. I, for one, find a lot of satisfaction in art - conventional art, such as the works that might be appreciated by someone like yourself.” 

Then he eyed Jack, “Art that someone like your guard-dog here wouldn’t be able to contemplate the meaning of…” he paused. “Well, I just happen to have an eye for the artistry that can be found elsewhere too, and that is uncomprehended by most people.”

Right, this nutjob was totally someone for Cage to break. Jack wasn’t even sure if he wanted to be close enough to the psycho to throw that punch.

“I live my life trying to consume - and produce, as you know - the finest works of art that grace the Earth. I am still in search of the definitive  _ magnum opus _ .”

“What you call art, I call murder,” Matty replied. 

The guy shrugged. “Simply a matter of definitions - we could discuss those later. But I digress, as I was saying, there is nothing stronger than the drive to survive. It is an animalistic thing that, ironically, humanizes people.”

“If you want to get to the point, then I suggest you do that,” Matty said. “Because I have things to do - differently from you, who is staring at the rest of your  _ entire _ life just now,” she made a gesture, waving at the walls.

“Oh, I am getting there - I promise you, Matilda. People are so impatient these days - although, I understand, you are a busy woman, you have a schedule that I interrupted with my invitation for this conversation. So, I will do you this favor, and get to the point. What do you people know about me, Matilda? Don’t you find that it is unusual to find me here?

_ “No one _ has outsmarted me. No one  _ survived me _ before. You are not the most incompetent agency out there looking for me, but you are not capable of keeping up.”

“I think that you are not as smart as you think. You are not infallible, and my agents got you when you least expected. There is a first time for everything, and now I am leaving, I am sure that you want to familiarize yourself with your permanent accommodations - I wouldn’t want to intrude on your moment of commiseration, when you will revise and review everything you did to find out where your plans went wrong.”

Matty stood, and Jack followed her lead, somewhat relieved that they were going. 

The door was unlocked, and Matty was about to open it when the psycho spoke again.

“You’re right, there is a first time for everything. What about your pet project, Matilda? Since you are in such a hurry, I will simplify things for you - I am referring to dear Angus.”

Really? Because of fucking course MacGyver had to know this psycho.

Matty’s hand froze on the door.

“Denying that you know what I am talking about would be a waste of time. I know all about it. And you wouldn’t believe me, but I am cooperating with you here - that is why I requested this meeting, after all. It’s a favor that I am doing, really. Now, you are not someone who can understand me… but I know Angus, and he is someone who will be able to grasp the message. I want to talk to him.”

Matty turned to the guy. “That won’t be possible. You won’t get anything else from me.”

“I suspected you would say that. You see, before I decided to come here, I took a few precautionary measures to assure that everything would go on smoothly. I may not have a common desk job, but even I have to leave things in order when I go on a vacation. As I was saying earlier, before I was rudely interrupted, I appreciate art. I know many techniques. And yes, I do have a preference for up-close methods, but I well versed in, as you would call it, murder that is not that contiguous in time and space with my immediate actions and presence.

“I have made sure that five high profile targets will die in the next month - how much time, exactly, is out of my hands. We know that the postal service can be very inefficient, and, either way, since people are different and all that, the treatment they will receive, and how their bodies will react to it also complicate the matter of giving you a more accurate estimation.”

“Come on, Matty,” Jack said this time. “He’s playing games.”

“I could be,” Psycho replied. “But are you going to wage everything on that? I mean, I win either way - don’t get me wrong, I am not in a hurry to undo my own work, but sometimes sacrifices are needed. I want to talk with Angus MacGyver. After our little chat, I will give him a list of the names of my targets, you don’t need to worry.

“Oh, and drop this whole Suspect 218 that you have going on. That is such an inappropriate way to refer to your friends. Tell Angus that Murdoc sends this invitation. He will remember me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts?
> 
> I swear that when I had the idea for this story, I was only thinking of the whump and emotional hurt/comfort potential, but oh boy, plot insinuated itself in, and oh well... I found myself even writing action - and I hope that my attempt of writing some action wasn't shameful lol. 
> 
> I was a bit concerned with this chapter, because I find it quite hard to write a character that is distinctive and eloquent, such as Murdoc, in any language that isn't my native one.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Riley and Jack learn that, if they want to avoid unpleasant conversations, maybe they shouldn't listen in on the private ones. Also, they unwittingly volunteer for a mission.

After the meeting with Suspect 218 - Murdoc, whatever - Jack could tell that Matty was rattled. It wasn’t hard to tell why. So much secrecy involving MacGyver’s past, and now she had allowed someone who wasn’t in on the secret to know a bit about it. Which meant that she hadn’t known about MacGyver’s involvement with Murdoc, or she would have never taken Jack with her.

Interesting - the wrong kind of interesting, by the way. The red flag kind of interesting. Well, it was not as if there hadn’t been other signs that MacGyver wasn’t exactly a nice company before, but now they were looking at a Death Star sized red flag.

Matty had gone straight to medical after talking with Murdoc, probably to interrogate MacGyver about why he had forgotten to mention anything about his friend.

Psychos knew each other, communicated in some secret, weird language. Or, that was Jack's theory, at least.

"That doesn't even make sense, Jack."

"Come on Riles! Mr. I-Am-A-Psycho-And-Proud said himself that only Mr. I-Make-Bombs-For-A-Living can understand him. That's some weird shit."

Riley rolled her eyes. "Yes, and this psycho - Murdoc - is certainly someone that we should trust."

Matty had taken MacGyver to talk with Murdoc, and predictably, did not invite Jack - or anyone else - for the trip.

"I'd give an arm to be a fly and be in that room to listen to them," Jack said.

Riley raised an eyebrow.

"Well, keep both of your arms, Jack. I have a fly there," Riley said.

"No, you didn't!" Jack said, "Wait. You did? You really did it? What did you do?"

"Jack, why did you think that I told you to come here to this park before going to HQ?" She asked, opening her laptop. "I may have hacke-"

"You hacked Matty?!"

"No, Jack! I really like having a job, so I don't go around hacking my boss. I hacked the surveillance system."

"Ok. Yeah, yeah, because that’s better than hacking Matty."

"Their meeting should start at any moment. You don’t need to stay here and listen if you think that I shouldn’t be doing this.”

Jack raised his hands, in mock surrender, “I never said that.”

“Damn,” Riley said, and typed something. “They turned off the cameras inside his cell.”

“Can’t you turn them back on?”

“I can, but I don’t want to risk it. They must have disabled the microphones there as well, and if I have to choose, I’d rather have the sound than the video,” she typed something else, “yeah, as I suspected. Here,” she handed him a pair of wireless earphones, and put on her own headphones.

There was nothing for a few minutes. “Are you sure you did everything right?”

Riley snorted and turned the computer screen to Jack. “Do you want to check if I got everything right?”

Jack looked at the screen - only a dark background with white letters on it, there wasn’t even any icons to click on.

“I think I’ll pass on that opportunity to show my hacking skills. You need your job.”

Riley was about to reply, but then the sound of the alarm of a cell door was heard - once when it was opened, and then when it was closed.

_“Angus… Matilda, good afternoon - or is it morning still?”_

“Okay, I get what you said about his voice,” Riley said. “It really is unsettling.”

“Told you.”

_“Forgive me the frankness, Director, but I want to talk with Angus, not with you. As you said yourself, this is my… home for now, so I’d like to ask you to wait outside.”_

There was no reply, but eventually, the door was opened and closed again.

 _“I am_ so _glad to see you again, Angus MacGyver.”_

 _“What do you want, Murdoc?”_ MacGyver replied.

 _“To talk with you, of course. Please, sit, standing can't be comfortable for your leg,_ ” Murdoc replied, as if he was at home and had a guest who had come to dinner. “ _I would offer you something to drink, but I think you will understand that I am not able to.”_

“ _Yeah, because I would accept anything that you offered me,”_ MacGyver said, and then there was the noise of a chair scraping against the floor.

“ _Oh, you are too skittish. No need for that. I know that we didn’t part on the best of terms, but I’d still consider you a friend…”_

_“You tried to kill me, and then you threatened me - several times. I know that you are twisted, but even you have to know that’s not even remotely close to friendship.”_

_“You wound me, Angus. Also, you are a hypocrite - it is not exactly like you are a good friend yourself - and I am not even talking about me. What would Wilt say about your friendsh-”_

_“Don’t,”_ MacGyver said, voice just below a shout. “ _Don’t talk about him._ ”

“ _Touchy subject, I see. I’m sorry,”_ Murdoc replied, and he actually sounded sincere. “ _I won’t talk about him, for now.”_

“ _Say what you want to say already, and give me the names of the people you’re threatening.”_

_“Oh, don’t tell me that you are busy too, like Matilda. You used to be more fun when you worked for the other side - although, I admit that this latest decision you’ve made of trying to reform yourself intrigues me. I want to understand it.”_

Well, so did Jack - as weird as it sounded to agree with the psycho.

_“I understand that things between us may be a tad bit one-sided, so I will explain where I am coming from. We never had time for a heart-to-heart before, so I think we should make up for the time lost._

_“You see, when I received the contract to kill you, I wasn’t impressed. I did enough research on you to accomplish my goal. I had little reason to dig deeper than the obvious - you know, just another terrorist, nothing out of the ordinary. Boring. But, you survived._ ”

“So the thing about no one surviving him was all talk,” Jack murmured.

“Why am I not surprised?”

 _“And Matilda will have to forgive me - but I did lie to her._ You _survived me, MacGyver. And I admit, I was angry - but as the days passed, I wasn’t so angry anymore. I was intrigued - dare I say, fascinated.”_

Riley frowned, “This sounds like some stalking shit. I had this friend in high school who had a stalker, and he was like that. I mean, less creepy and less dangerous - I hacked his social media and destroyed his life…”

_“Don’t get me wrong - I still want to kill yo-”_

_“Yeah, you have a bullet with my name on it,”_ MacGyver interrupted.

“ _Oh, please, Angus. A bullet with your name? That’s tacky - and I do not have such a poor taste, you should know at least_ that _by now. When I do decide to kill you, it will not be like that. I haven’t chosen the way yet, but I did think about it, more than you’d care to know, probably - and trust me, none of the scenarios involve anything remotely as quick as a bullet.”_

“Ok, Jack, now I think that you downplayed how creepy this guy is.”

“Well, I guess he doesn’t hate Matty and me as much as he hates MacGyver,” Jack replied, for the first time admitting that… well, the conversation didn’t indicate that MacGyver and Murdoc had any sort of friendship, as Psycho had implied the day before, and as he continued to insist on now.

Maybe MacGyver had turned away from being a terrorist because he had been receiving death threats? Well, Jack could actually see that having a psycho like Murdoc after them would make a lot of people do some rethinking.

 _“But let’s not put the cart before the horse,”_ Murdoc continued. _“I did not invite you here to discuss your death, MacGyver. I - we - have more pressing matters to discuss. Time flies, and we need to use it wisely,"_ he paused, _"Act at the right moment - as the ancient greek would say,_ kairos. _”_

Riley groaned. "This is all useless. We aren't closer to getting the names, or learning something about MacGyver - other than he apparently has a friend named Wilt."

“Well, Kairos is the title of an album by Sepultura - not their greatest, I have to say,” Jack said. “But yeah, it’s a bit unfair to compare it to their six first albums, if I had to pick a favorite, it would definitely be Chaos A.D. - top of my list of thrash albums, up there with Ride the Lightning, Peace Sells… and Master, of course.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not what he’s talking about, Jack. Stop shoehorning thrash metal in unrelated conversations,” Riley replied, rolling her eyes. “Does this guy even have a point with all of this?”

“Who knows? Last time he just talked and talked and asked to see Bomberman. Matty did the talking, and I'm glad for that. Honestly, I still don’t know what he meant with the stuff he said yesterday, going about survival instinct and shit."

Riley shrugged, and they went back to listening.

_"What matters, Angus, is that I've called you here because I have more information to pass on - those five names that you want, they are insignificant."_

There was a loud noise - something hitting a surface - and then it was MacGyver who spoke.

" _Stop this. You said you would give the names, so give them already and stop playing games,"_ and this time he did shout.

_"Why do you care if five people die, MacGyver? It’s not like caring about lives was in the job description of your previous employment situation. Oh, why that face? Don’t tell me you are all repentant now - that would be pathetic."_

"He’s starting to talk. Finally," Jack said.

_"And no, I will not give you the names already. I told you that I have additional information that I am willing to give you - but, nothing is free in this world."_

" _So_ ask _what you want and stop playing games."_

Murdoc laughed - and yeah, it was still creepy as hell.

" _Oh Dear, this is a bit disappointing, but maybe all this… emotional distress that you are displaying is to blame here for the slowness. You are my payment, MacGyver. This conversation is my price._

_"Before I kill you, I want to understand you - know your enemy, and all that. This last development had me, admittedly, puzzled. Because, you see, Angus, I know quite a lot about you, and some of the pieces don't match._

_"Do you think that Wilt is the only thing from your past that I am aware of? No, it is not. I know how mommy died when you were five, and that daddy left when you were ten - right after your birthday, wasn't it? Tell me, MacGyver, which one bothers you the most? Your mother is long gone, but at least she died. At least she didn't_ choose _to leave you."_

Jesus.

Jack waited for MacGyver to deny those things, but the silence that followed said it all.

That was… well, past the point of creepy. The things he was saying had to be downright hurtful for anyone who wasn't a psychopath like him. Against his will, Jack found himself actually sympathising with MacGyver.

 _"You don't know me,"_ MacGyver finally said, his voice controlled this time, having apparently reigned down on the anger. Jack was actually impressed - he would have punched the guy already - ok, he would have done much more than punching Murdoc. _"Just because you know those things, you don't know me."_

_"Care to listen to what else I know? You were every bit the little boy scout during your adolescence. Then you went to MIT and nothing - nothing indicated that you would end up a terrorist._

_"I know that sons need their fathers. And I think that this turn you took in life was to get daddy's attention. Blow up a few things here and there so that he would see you, MacGyver. Maybe you wanted to make him regret leaving you, seeing what you became?"_

It took a few seconds, and then there was the sound of something - a chair - being violently scrapped on the floor and falling down, and then the sound of scruffing. So Bomberman was not above roughing up the guy, after all.

Murdoc laughed again. " _See how I know you?"_

Riley scoffed. "I definitely wasn't expecting that."

The noise of the door sounded again.

" _If you leave this room, I won't say anything,"_ Murdoc said.

And yeah, they needed those names, and whatever additional information Murdoc said he had - if that was even true - but Jack kind of wanted this conversation to be done.

 _"Good decision, MacGyver,"_ Murdoc said, and it was possible to hear in voice just how much he was enjoying all of this. _"For starters, I have to tell you that your friends, the Hendriks, are back, and they are continuing with their plans from where they were stopped. They want to shake up things - poison food here, poison the water there, well… you know better than anyone what they want to do."_

_"How do you know this? And why would you tell us that?"_

_"To answer the first question: I know people who know that sort of thing - you won't believe the things people confess when they are bargaining for their lives, not that it all worked the way they expected, anyway... As for the second: they are in possession of a nice little chemical which they plan to release to create some chaos and death - but this time, on a global scale. I'd rather if that didn't happen. And saving the day totally is not my thing, so I decided to just go to the right person with this. Not that you are the right person to save anything, quite the contrary, actually - but your new friends certainly can do that."_

_"You expect me to believe that you are trying to stop them from releasing this chemical agent?"_ MacGyver asked, disbelief and exhaustion filled his voice. “You _, Murdoc?”_

_"Well, it is not like I can continue doing my thing if I am dead - I don't believe in any sort of afterlife. And, well, time is passing, so I realized that now would be the precise moment to get in touch and pass on the information. Took a page out of your book - improvised just like you did in Poland that day. And here we are."_

"What the hell," Riley murmured, typing something on the keyboard. "There are a few entries for the name Hendriks, but…” she scrolled through a list of documents, “I believe he is talking about this guy - Jan Hendriks was the head a terrorist group based in the Netherlands - his group had some cultist thing going on, some ideas about purifying the Earth, basically by poisoning people and seeing who survived. But they were brought down in 2014, in an operation conducted by the CIA. The head of the group, Jan Hendriks, was killed."

"And is there anything about them being back?"

"No," Riley replied. "But I will need to look more into that."

 _"And the five names?"_ MacGyver asked.

" _Ah, that. I am afraid that one was a lie - oopsie. I had to get you here, after all."_

Riley grimaced, and Jack took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, both waiting for something to happen - would MacGyver finally flip completely? But then the door of the cell was opened and closed again, and this time the shuffling noise told them that MacGyver had, indeed, left.

_"Be seeing you soon, MacGyver."_

** ** ** **

That same night, when Jack was finishing a beer and getting ready to fall asleep watching Die Hard, he got a text from Matty.

**Get your ass here. Now.**

Jack groaned, and he almost considered ignoring the text - he could tell Matty that he’d fallen asleep, and that his phone was on silent.

Only, his phone was never on silent, not during the night, and Matty knew that.

Driving past the speed limit, and through a few red lights, he got to Phoenix in almost record time. If there was no option other than going, he preferred not to keep Matty waiting, not if she was calling this late.

Riley was already in the war room, and Matty smiled when she saw him. “Close the door,” she ordered.

“What is it, Matty? You couldn’t wait 'til morning?” he asked. “I was kinda going to sleep - you know, people need rest if they’re going to work the next day.”

“It’s past midnight, Jack, it is already the next day,” Matty said, “I would like to sleep too. But you see, Jack, I have a problem - and since I am the director, I cannot sleep until it gets solved.

“Do you know where I was the whole time after MacGyver and I came back from the meeting with Murdoc?”

Jack glanced at Riley, and saw that she had that expression of “we got caught.”

“Haven’t the faintest idea, Matty,” Jack replied.

“I was talking with Oversight. We have a big problem in our hands - a terrorist group who has resurfaced and is now in possession of a chemical agent that they plan to release,” she paused, narrowing her eyes, “and why don’t you seem surprised by that, Jack?”

“You know me, Matty, I’m always a few steps ahead.”

Matty nodded, “Yes, exactly, Jack, that’s _totally_ you - that is why the US government pays you. Then you probably already know that _I_ have another problem in my hands too. Imagine my surprise when Oversight informed me that someone,” she glanced at Riley, “accessed our database today, looking for this specific information. Does the name Jan Hendriks ring a bell?”

“Matty, I can explai-”

“Save it, Riley,” Matty replied. “You listened in a private conversation that you had no business poking on. There is no explanation for that.”

Well, there kinda was? They were spies, their job was poking their noses on everyone’s business. But he didn’t say that - Jack could tell that this time Matty was truly displeased - yeah, she seemed to live in a constant state of annoyance when it came to Jack, but this… this was truly bad.

“Do you two have any idea of just how close I came today of losing one of my best agents, _and_ my best computer analyst?” Matty asked. “Because Oversight was ready to toss you in a black site for the rest of your lives,” Matty’s smile said that maybe she didn’t find the idea so bad.

Riley gulped. “But Oversight is not goin-”

“No, Riley. Oversight knows that we will need a team to track down whatever remains of the group once led by Jan Hendriks, and for now, the less people that know about it, the better. You practically volunteered for this mission when you pulled your stunt. You’re welcome that I convinced Oversight to do this.”

“Are we really going to believe in that lunatic?” Jack asked. “Come on, you saw that he was lying about the whole sending poisoned letters to people.”

“Really, are you sure about that?” Matty said, “because today, two businessmen and three politicians in five different countries received packages containing a toxic agent. Three of them are dead, and the other two are in critical condition. Murdoc never lied about the targets existing. He lied about us being able to stop him.”

There was a knock on the door, and then MacGyver entered the room. He froze for a few seconds, but then closed the door behind him and them walked in - limping a bit.

“Matty,” he greeted. “Agent Davis, Agent Dalton.”

“I won’t keep you long, Blondie, but since you were still here, I thought that it would be good to let you know who you will be working with to track down _Hendriks_.”

 _Blondie?_ Jack looked at Riley, intent on making fun of MacGyver’s nickname, but she rolled her eyes and looked away.

“We were recording your meeting with Murdoc,” Matty said. Again, the guy froze - his good leg, which he had been bouncing, stopped.

“And Riley and Jack already listened to the recording, so you won’t need to brief them on what happened there. Also, they will read the relevant parts of your initial report about the Hendriks. Tomorrow we will begin trying to track them down, and to find out what kind of chemical agent they have - Murdoc was not cooperative after you left, and I frankly think he doesn’t really know more than he already said, and we don't have time to sort out the truth from the lies he tells."

MacGyver swallowed and nodded mechanically.

“I need you to reread that report as well, and think if there is anything that you might have forgotten, any name, any place, anything. In the meantime, I will have a talk with the CIA and get my hands on the report of the Hendriks op.”

“I will do that, Matty.”

“Good, you can go, Mac.”

MacGyver left after saying a quiet “good night”, leaving Jack and Riley, once again, alone with Matty.

“I am sure that you are both curious about what you heard today. Now, this is my last warning for you. You will forget all that you heard today about Mac’s friend, his mother, his father, his going to MIT. Everything. I bet you’re dying to know more - but, if you go and try to meddle in that more than you already did,” she pinned Riley with a look, “No one will keep you out of a black site - and _I_ won’t even _try_ to. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Matty,” Riley replied. Matty nodded, and looked expectantly at Jack.

“Copy that, Matty.”

Yep, forget all about MacGyver blowing up shit to solve his daddy issues. Jack wasn't going to touch that mess with a ten-foot pole, thank you very much.

“Good. Then you can go. I want you two here early morning, well rested, and having read MacGyver’s report. Thoroughly.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some communication finally happens (God bless Riley!), and some answers are given.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I’ll be away for a few days, and I’m not taking my computer with me, which means that I won’t be able to post chapters 5 and 6 according to schedule, so I’m posting them now. I’m a bit in a hurry, so I can’t reply to the latest comments, but I appreciate all of them, and I’m glad there are people enjoying this story :)

Since they needed to study MacGyver’s report, Riley had crashed at Jack’s apartment. Neither of them would get much sleep, not if they wanted to be prepared for the meeting in the morning - and working together was bound to make things easier. 

“And did you see, Riley? Matty treating the guy all nice - ‘I won’t keep you long,  _ Blondie _ ’, and that while she made me drive to Phoenix at midnight. Do you think that’s fair? I’m going to fill a complaint at HR.”

“I don’t know, Jack. Matty wasn’t being nice - she was treating the guy neutrally. I mean, it wasn’t him who hacked the surveillance system and got caught by Oversight.”

“Well, but it wasn’t us going around exploding shit, was it?” 

“For what’s worth, MacGyver didn’t go around exploding shit either - except once.”

“What do you mean? Isn’t it like... what he did before?”

“I did some digging on him,” Riley said, and raised one hand to silence Jack when he started to speak. “It was before - at the beginning, after that day in the warehouse. Of course I did, Jack. I didn’t trust the guy, and I wanted to know exactly what we were dealing with. All I knew was what Matty said in the briefing - a guy building bombs for terrorists, but I knew that she would not put up with that sort of person if she didn’t have a good reason to. Now I am pretty sure that Matty knows what I did - but, well…”

“Wait, Riley. You pulled the file from the guy and did not tell me? That’s no bueno.”

“I didn’t want you gossiping about it. You can’t keep a secret. I just wanted to make sure that he wasn’t about to kill us - or other agents.”

“Excuse me? Jack Dalton can’t keep a secret? Riley, I am a  _ secret _ agent - it is kind of my job to keep secrets.”

“Well, I was trying to not let Matty know that I’d pulled his file - and, sorry Jack, you are a good agent,  _ and _ you have gone undercover many times successfully, but you were not dealing with this in a mature way. You would have given things away. Now that Matty knows - or I guess she does, because she’s been giving me these looks - it doesn’t matter anymore. And, I would have shared info with you, if I thought that anything was very bad…”

“And it wasn’t?”

“Well, not worse than what I was prepared for. Some parts are still redacted - and anything before he started studying at MIT is non-existent, except for what Murdoc said about his mother and father. But… well. He went to the Netherlands during his second year at MIT, it was part of an academic competition between teams from various educational institutions. Something about new materials. One of the tasks in the competition was about imploding old, unused buildings.

“MacGyver’s team won the competition. And that was when he was approached by Hendriks. He came back to the USA but left after two months. It is not clear exactly what he was doing for them - but it was something sophisticated, it was taking a long time, and when the CIA op happened, MacGyver exploded his way out of there. He escaped with this girl - Angela Hendriks, who was - is - Jan’s daughter. They were never seen together after that, though.”

“And this happened when?”

“Nine months after he started working with Hendriks.”

Jack checked MacGyver’s report - and really, calling that a report was being generous. It was an interrogation. 

“So, from what MacGyver said, Jan Hendriks wanted to launch a chemical attack of a massive scale,” Jack said. “He was working on that. We know that from his interrogation, but not from the file you pulled.”

“Yeah.”

“Ok… So that’s nine months. What was he doing after that? He was in Europe for two years.”

“After that, he was laying low, I guess, for another two months. Then he did a job in Italy - he was hired to blow up a warehouse where smuggled guns were being kept. Whatever he used, the explosion was so intense that the investigators thought that all the guns had turned into melted metal. Except, that was a ruse - and we only know that because he told the Phoenix after his extraction. Whoever had those guns wanted someone else - the authorities, or rivals - to think they didn’t have said them. Also, a guy was killed in the explosion. 

“Then, after this, he went to Poland, where he was working with a former CIA agent - name redacted - who went rogue. Whoever this guy is, he is very dangerous and influential. Started running guns, then also drugs, but now he was trying to offer more than guns for terrorist groups…”

“Bombs,” Jack guessed.

“Yeah,” Riley said. “MacGyver said that he was developing a new explosive for a client that the rogue CIA agent put him in contact with. They wanted something that could bypass airport security, and he promised them that he would give them that. The next part is redacted, I guess it’s about the technical details,” Riley said. “But from everything we know from the Phoenix op that extracted MacGyver, I’d guess that he had been working in some sort of research all that time.”

“And that’s it?” Jack asked.

“That’s it,” she replied, shrugging. “And I mean, I am not saying that the guy is innocent - he clearly made some bad choices - but he wasn’t going around and blowing up everything like you seem to think.”

“Only because he wanted to make bigger, better bombs, Riley.”

“Maybe.”

“And he was working with the guys who wanted to bring the chemical apocalypse - that’s not even a cool apocalypse, Riley.”

“Really, Jack? That’s your complaint - and what kind of apocalypse is even cool?”

“Well, zombie kinda is - It’s horrible, but at least we’d get to shoot a few zombies on their faces. I played Resident Evil, I would do well in a zombie apocalypse.”

“I can’t believe we are discussing this!” she shook her head and eyed the file on the screen again. “And there’s more stuff, but redacted. But as far as we know, he killed one guy - and before you say it, yes, I know. What I am saying is this: it could be much worse, and it’s obvious the guy is at least somewhat not the monster we first thought. This file mentions tons of other files from the psychologists, and I did get them, but they were entirely redacted.”

Jack frowned. “What? Why? Why would his psych evaluations be redacted, and not the rest?”

Riley made a gesture that indicated that she had no idea either. 

“But, well, from what we do know… If I had to guess… maybe this guy was buying time. Think of it - all his jobs with the terrorists were super long term, and neither of the two biggest ones was actually successful. Except for the warehouse explosion. And that one, yeah, ended up with guns on the wrong hands  _ and _ killed one man. But… I don’t know, maybe he fell in with the wrong crowd, and was trying to get out, but it can be complicated to get out of something like that. I would know.”

Jack looked down, pinching the bridge of his nose when he finally understood where Riley was coming from. Damn!

“You… oh, Riley… you relate to this guy, don’t you?”

Riley had the grace of looking guilty, but Jack could also see that, by the determined look on her face, she wouldn’t back down from whatever opinions she had - and really, when did Riley ever back down from her opinions?

“Look, when I was hacking, I did jobs that were illegal but that let me sleep at night - and when I was asked to do something that crossed a line that I wouldn’t cross, I found a way out - ended up in jail. And sometimes I think about what would have happened if I hadn’t found a way out, if someone had asked me to do something else. I might have fallen down on a spiral and wouldn’t be able to get out. Now, can we go back to his interrogation and focus on the Hendriks thing - we are trying to track them down, and I really don’t want to mess up with Matty again.”

"Ok, Riley… just one last question. Why did you Jack the meeting today? I mean, if you already had all this info."

"I was curious. I thought that Murdoc it was a super bad sign. I had no idea what a psycho this Murdoc was, and I thought their meeting would be revealing, that I'd get more information than his file contains."

Jack laughed. "Not a lot of luck on that." 

"Yeah. But we found out that MacGyver and the psycho are not friends. Like… at all." 

** ** ** **

When Jack and Riley got to the war room, both with dark circles under their eyes and carrying their cups of coffee, Matty wasn’t there yet. Instead, they found MacGyver standing, clearly waiting for them. 

Closing the door behind him, Jack made a beeline for one of the chairs and sat down. Riley sat on the chair beside him, and MacGyver ended up on a chair in front of them.

“MacGyver,” Riley said. 

“I wanted to talk with you two before we started the meeting - that’s why I asked Matty a few minutes before we started.”

Riley nodded, and Jack crossed his arms in front of his chest. “We’re all ears,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of interesting things to say.”

MacGyver rolled his eyes, but didn't otherwise rise to the bait. Instead, he went directly to the point.

“I know that you don’t trust me, and working with people you don’t trust can be hard. I feel the same.”

Jack scoffed. Well, if MacGyver chose better the people he worked with, perhaps he wouldn’t have any complaints about that, right? 

“And because you don’t trust me, I can’t trust you either,” MacGyver continued.

“What? Look here, bud, you might want to rethink what you’re going on about now, because you’ve got some nerve to say that Riley and I aren’t trustworthy.”

“I am only saying that there is some trust we need to establish. I know what I am, and I know what you both think I am. And that isn’t going to change. But I’m also sure of what I can do, and more than that, this mission relating to Hendriks will have a lot of intel coming from and through me. So, one way or another, you’ll have to trust me at some point, right? Unless you ask Matty to pull you out.”

And that was the main problem, as far as Jack was concerned. MacGyver was right, their mission leaned a lot on intel given by him. And yeah, he was a bit less opposed to working with MacGyver, after what Riley told him a few hours before, but it wasn’t as though he was going to let the guy off the hook easily. 

That ‘unless you ask Matty to pull you out’ sounded a lot like a challenge, or that’s how Jack heard that line, and MacGyver might not know, but he had just challenged Jack Dalton to do something. 

“I’m just saying that - if you’re willing to work on the intel that comes from me, maybe you could trust what I can  _ do _ too.”

“This is about the cartel warehouse,” Riley said. 

MacGyver nodded. “Whatever you think, I wasn’t going to stay inside the warehouse and let myself be blown up to bits.”

“Not that we’d care,” Jack said.

“Well, thank you for your concern, but that is not my point,” MacGyver replied. “What I was going to say is that I know my limits. When I told you that I wasn’t sure about being able to defuse the IED, and when I said that I was going to try more, I knew that I had time to do that. You didn’t need to go running to Matty and shooting me with tranquilisers. You’re not a specialist in explosives or bombs. I am.”

Jack snorted. “I had orders. And it's not like you did your job that day, is it?"

“Look. That day, I just wanted to alert you both to the possibility that we might need to make a quick exit. I wasn’t giving up.  _ And _ , that day, letting the warehouse explode didn’t matter, but if I end up in the field with you - and there’s a great likelihood that will happen, depending on what kind of information we get about Hendriks’s group - there might be decisions that will matter. And I need to know that you won’t stop me from doing my job. I can’t worry about doing what I need to do  _ and _ wonder if you will not get in the way.”

“Fine,” it was Riley who replied, giving Jack a look that said ‘shut-up’. “And you give us your word that as soon as things go completely off the rails, you will tell us, and we will get the hell out.”

“Deal,” MacGyver replied, extending her one hand, and after Riley had shaken it, he did the same to Jack.

Jack hesitated only for one second, but then he shook MacGyver’s hand. 

Of course, neither Jack nor Riley knew, right then, that MacGyver’s limits were a bit more on the “doing the impossible” side of the scale than those of a normal, sane person. 

** ** ** **

“I now have access to the report of the CIA operation that took down Hendriks’s organization,” Matty said. “An undercover CIA agent, Nathan Brown, who had infiltrated Hendriks’ group was the person who leaked the information about his plans and the meeting that would be happening. Hendriks was negotiating a big shipment of a chemical agent. Present at that meeting were Hendriks, his wife Irene, his daughter Angela, and a dozen of his associates, which included Nathan.”

“And me,” MacGyver said. “I was there to inspect the shipment, to see if everything was correct.”

“Nathan didn’t know what the shipment contained, he only knew that it was very important, but we do now,” Matty explained, and looked at the blonde.

“Yes. It was a chemical agent that, when combined with another substance, and when undergone through a violently exothermic reaction would produce a very stable gas which has a slightly higher density than air, and affinity for haemoglobin that is twenty-five per cent higher than oxygen.”

“Which means…” Jack said. 

“Hendriks wanted to build a bomb that would cause some damage at the explosion itself, but his final goal was to poison people throughout the subsequent days. People would suffocate little by little. And because of the gas density, it wouldn’t disperse easily given the right atmospheric conditions. By the time anyone noticed what was happening, it would be too late. The affected region would be too extensive.”

“You would make that bomb, you mean.”

“Yes.”

Ok. That was… horrible. Jack looked at Riley, then at Matty, then at MacGyver, and from their looks, he wasn’t the only person who was uncomfortable there. 

“The CIA was able to intercept the shipment, and arrest a few of Hendriks’ associates, and Jan and Irene were killed. Others escaped - including Angela Hendriks and you,” Matty replied. “Fortunately, the captured associates gave enough information that led to the arrest of Geertl Thyssen, another person who was very close with Hendriks, but who wasn’t there that night. Thyssen, in turn, gave the names of a few dozen people throughout Europe, South America and Australia who were also involved in the group.”

“I didn’t know that Thyssen had been arrested,” MacGyver replied. “Ok. Here’s what I know. I met with Thyssen once, and he was… crazy. I mean, all of them were. Hendriks had the whole ‘let’s purify Earth’ going on, and he firmly believed in that. But Thyssen... Well, Thyssen killed his own child in the name of that. And sometimes - I mentioned this during my interrogation, so you already know that - sometimes he seemed to be the one truly in charge of the whole group. He never liked me, but he knew that they needed me, so when things went south for them, he hired Murdoc to kill me - I mean, I am not sure it was him, but it’s my best guess. 

“Maybe he found someone else to finish my job, and Murdoc learned that through this person. I don’t know. It’s hard to trust anything he says.”

“Well, he had a lot of info about you,” Riley said. “It’s not unbelievable that he would know about them too.”

“True.”

“Alright. Riley, look up Geert Thyssen and try to find anything unusual. He might have a contact outside that would carry out the plans in case he was otherwise unable to. Mac, you helped Angela escape - you said that she wanted to run away from her family, any chance that she lied?”

“I don’t know. She hated her family and what they were doing, I could tell. But Jan and Irene had her under watch a lot of the time, so when I saw the opportunity, I helped her. She thanked me for getting her out, and seemed sincere. We parted ways, and I left for Italy soon after that, never saw her again.”

So… the same guy who was planning to build a weapon of mass destruction also helped a girl to escape her insane family? Why would he? 

“Riley, look up Angela, see what she’s been doing since then,” Matty turned around, looking at the screen. “We have to find something on this, or find conclusive proof that Murdoc is lying, but until then, we will assume he was telling the truth. Mac, how likely do you think it is that they found someone to finish your job?”

MacGyver didn’t reply for a long moment, he narrowed his eyes, looking deep in thought.

“The components were unknown. They are… my idea. Hendriks knew the name of them, of course. That first shipment was correct, but it was taken by the CIA?” he asked, looking at Matty, who nodded. “So it would take some time to find another source and to arrange the quantity that they would need. There is another detail. The explosion needs to be very intense - precisely, it needs to reach very high temperatures…”

“Alright, but all this rambling that doesn’t tell us whether or not it would be hard to continue your work.”

“Actually, it does. I didn’t tell anyone about the specifics of the explosion. I told Hendriks that I’d need to test things, but I was using explosives that cause more shock and impact than heat during the detonation. If someone tried to continue my job, they might or might not find that out fast.”

Riley looked at Jack, raising her eyebrows subtly. This last bit made sense if Riley’s theory was correct. He looked at Matty. Damn, what the hell was she doing? Why wouldn’t she be more straightforward about this, if Riley was right...

“I found something about Angela,” Riley said, not looking up from her rig. “She’s been living in… Spain, apparently. Working as a waitress.”

Then a video appeared on the big screen. The quality of the image was not the best, but it clearly showed a woman - mid-twenties, blonde - entering a restaurant. MacGyver breathed in what seemed like relief when he looked at the image.

“Murdoc didn’t mention Thyssen,” Riley said. “He mentioned Hendriks. So… who else in the family is a suspect who isn’t dead or in jail?”

“Mark,” Matty replied, earning a confused look from MacGyver. 

“Mark Hendriks is Angela’s older brother - his mother was Jan’s first wife. Not the sharpest tool in the box,” MacGyver explained. “His father kept him away from the more sensitive business because Mark could be too enthusiastic about things. He was volatile, so he wasn’t there when the CIA came, I just thought that he’d been caught after that,” frowning, he paused. “Hard to believe that he would be behind this, but at the same time, he is the person who would be sloppy enough to let intel leak…”

“Riley,” Matty said. 

“I’m on it already, boss,” Riley replied. 

“This Mark might not be the brightest guy out there, but he’s avoided being caught until now,” Jack said. 

“Yes,” MacGyver agreed. “But, he is not working alone. I still think Thyssen is behind this. He might be using Mark’s name to pull a few strings.” 

“And until we know exactly what is happening, we won’t risk alerting them that we know anything,” Matty said. 

“I can track down the sales of chemical agents to see if any suspicious buying happened. I just need to know what I should look for,” Riley said, looking at MacGyver.

“Start by looking for anything relating to the reagents used in flow cytometry and PCR.”

Now, Jack was sure that some people would describe him as ‘not the sharpest tool in the box’, just like MacGyver referred to Mark Hendriks. Most of the time, he didn’t mind that, and even cultivated that persona - he knew what he was good at, and it definitely wasn’t at sciencing his way through problems. But he’d been around different people for a while now, and even though he didn’t know exactly why flow cytometry and PCR - which sounded just like the name of an alphabet soup agency, if he were being honest - worked, he did know that those were not dangerous things.

Which meant that either MacGyver was lying, or…

“This SPR thing - isn’t it used for, like… harmless shit like diagnostics and paternity tests?”

MacGyver huffed. “ _ PCR _ is used for many things, it’s a common reaction in any molecular biology lab. And normally, it is mostly harmless - there is one step which involves using ethidium bromide - a mutagen agent - to stain DNA, but that isn’t important here. The bomb I was making for Hendriks used reagents of similar appearance to those used in reactions like PCR and flow cytometry - mostly the fluorescent ones. It was a way to cover our tracks. The reagents themselves are very different, the tricky part was designing something that could be passed as harmless.”

Yeah. Either MacGyver was lying to then, or… this. The guy knew very well what he was talking about, which meant that he was more dangerous than previously thought. Potentially. 

Jack was ready to add that ‘potentially’ where MacGyver was concerned, after going through the file and listening to Riley.

And now he could see it better why Phoenix would make concessions, and try to keep a guy like that on their side, despite his past. 

“Someone broke into a factory in Germany and stole something called SYBR Green. A whole shipment,” Riley said.

“That could be our lead,” Matty said. “When did this happen?”

“It was… almost three months ago.”

“They are smuggling the real reagents among the SYBR Green,” MacGyver replied. “See if you can find reports of SYBR Green reports being transported.”

“That is probably where the attack will happen,” Matty added. 

They discussed more details, MacGyver gave Riley the names of other chemicals she should look for - they had more numbers than letters in their names, really. Jack used the opportunity to observe MacGyver. From the way the guy asked questions, it was obvious that he was getting some training on how to conduct that sort of investigation, and how to put together pieces of intel to see where things were going. He even knew some of the lingo.

Damn Matty. She really wasn’t wasting time on this. Her project would end up with MacGyver a fully-fledged agent at Phoenix. Jack wanted to know whether that was the result of Matty owing someone, or someone owing her. Knowing Matty, probably the latter. The earlier threat of life in a black site is enough to stop his thoughts there, though.

“Ok,” Riley said. “I’ve got a few things… Shipments of all the stuff you mentioned are in… Spain. The last one arrived last Monday.”

MacGyver ran his fingers through his hair, looking lost in thought. 

“And… Matty?” Riley said. “I just found a flight ticket booked for Angela Hendriks, it’s from Madrid to Amsterdam, two weeks from now.”

Well, damn. It looked like they’d found the place and time for the attack. And, the greatest surprise of all, Murdoc wasn’t lying. Angela Hendriks, however, had been lying to MacGyver. Or MacGyver was lying. Or both.

“We know that the attack will happen in two weeks,” Matty said. “And we know that it will be in Spain, but we don’t know where exactly. Our best lead is Angela Hendriks.”

“And our best way to get to her is me,” MacGyver said, without inflection, staring at the screen. 

  
  



	6. Chapter 6

“Jack, please, stop this!”

“Come on, Riley. I’m practising my Spanish - it’s been some time since I’ve had time for immersion. Last time was when we were doing that op in Bogota.”

Well, technically they’d been to Argentina a few days ago, but he’d had no time to speak the language, then.

“No, Jack. You’re murdering the Spanish language, _just like_ you did in Bogota. Finishing your Duolingo tree doesn’t make you fluent. That phrase you just used has Spanish mixed with something else.”

“Italian.”

Jack turned around, saw that MacGyver was walking towards them, coming from the back of the jet.

“What?” Jack said.

“The language you mixed up with your Spanish. It was Italian,” he paused, pointed at his ear. “The comms were open,” he added, awkwardly.

One day into this whole thing with MacGyver, and one noticeable thing was that sometimes the guy blurted out information in a very ‘well, actually’ way. And his explanations yesterday were on the side of too long and sciency. Jack had seen that type before, and while that habit could be annoying, at least it wasn’t anything that put them in danger, and honestly, Jack didn’t think it was on purpose. Besides, at least when MacGyver was going on about that, he seemed a hundred per cent sincere.

“Seems to me like I can speak Spanish _and_ Italian, then.”

Riley chuckled. “Of course, that’s what you’d conclude from this.”

“It’s the only conclusion possible, Riley. I’m on my way to be a polymath.”

“Polyglot, Jack! And you are not one.”

“And neither a polymath,” Matty said, voice coming through the comms. “You’ll be landing in thirty minutes, and I want all of you focused on the mission.”

** ** ** **

It rained. A lot. It seemed like it was raining the water accumulated for an entire year. And the car they had rented was the least appropriate for rain like that one.

Still, he was optimistic about the night.

Jack didn’t say it - that was the sort of thing that shouldn’t be said aloud - but this was the kind of mission that was… _easy_. Get in, get Hendriks to talk - preferably without making a fuss, - get out. It was the sort of op that was easier to focus on, because there weren’t many variables out of their control.

He was grateful for that, because one: MacGyver was still injured, limping, and the only reason he was in this mission at all was because they were trying to talk with Angela Hendriks without alerting anyone before they knew more about the attack. Jack and Riley could deal with threats, but Jack had no idea about what kind of experience the guy had with confrontations, especially injured.

And two: Jack didn’t want to find himself in a situation where he’d need to trust MacGyver with a gun. It was relieving that he didn’t carry a gun - maybe Matty didn’t trust the man as much she claimed she did, or whatever…

Hopefully, none of those things would happen today.

And that was how they found themselves in a car parked in front of Angela Hendriks’s house. The lights were on, and a silhouette could be seen behind the curtains of what seemed to be the kitchen window.

“This house definitely doesn’t seem like the rent could be paid with a waitress salary,” Jack said. It was a nice place, in a nice neighbourhood, according to the info Riley had pulled. “And man, that car wasn’t cheap.”

It was certainly better than the car _they_ were in - but there weren’t many options at the rental place.

“I’ve hacked all the surveillance cameras of the neighbours, and hers,” Riley said. “I used the old recordings, and to anyone who watches this later, it will look like nothing happened.”

“ _Good_ ,” Matty said. “ _Remember, independently of what happens today, we need Angela Hendriks to give us the location of her brother.”_

“I know,” MacGyver replied. “But if I try to talk to her before it will be easier.”

“Look, MacGyver,” Jack said, “All that talk about trust… you should know by now that I don’t trust easily. I am putting up with you, but I am not going to extend that to your former friends. Right now we have someone who is a suspect of planning an attack, and she’s our best lead, and she looks suspicious as hell.”

“I know, I know. For what’s worth, I don’t think she is involved in this, she wanted out of the madness of her family. Just… don’t hurt her, okay? ”

“Hurt her?” Jack said, disbelief and anger impossible to hide in his voice. “I’m not here to do that, MacGyver! But if you can’t convince her to come with us, then yes, I will. My way.”

Which yes, involved putting a gun to people’s faces and threatening them, but what the hell was MacGyver even doing there if he couldn’t stomach that?

“ _Mac, Jack_ !” Matty’s voice sounded through the comms. “ _Stop this. Right. Now. Your priority is getting intel without alerting anyone, and that means not causing a scene and preferably not extracting her. But, if she doesn’t cooperate, you will bring her to HQ. Now_ go. _”_

They left the car and crossed the street, running. The place was empty - it was a calm neighbourhood, and it was almost dinner time - although the rain probably had something to do with the empty streets. Except for a guy on a motorbike who drove past them five minutes ago, there was not a sign of life outside.

MacGyver knocked on the door, and a sound of something falling down could be heard from the kitchen. The next sounds were footsteps and the noise of keys clinking against each other.

“¿Quién está ahí?” A female voice asked. “¿Quién es?” she repeated after a few seconds in silence.

See, Riley? He could understand Spanish.

“Angela,” MacGyver replied. “It’s me, Angus MacGyver.”

“What?” And then Angela started to speak in a language that Jack didn’t understand, but had heard enough to know it was Dutch. MacGyver replied in the same language.

Riley was already running a translation program, and relaying to Jack whatever was being said by MacGyver and the girl.

“ _She’s asking what he’s doing here. MacGyver is trying to convince her to let you in. Hendriks sounds angry, nervous maybe._ ”

Well, anyone sounded angry speaking Dutch, but Jack didn’t point that out. First, because he couldn’t talk right now, lest he made the girl even more uncooperative, and second because, once a few years ago, right after they’d started at Phoenix Foundation, Riley had had a phase when she studied German, and when he told her that the language sounded harsh, she gave him a lecture about how his native language made him biased to any language that had a very different phonetics. He never brought up the subject again.

“ _She said that he shouldn’t be here, that he should go.”_ Jack’s hand went to his gun, and he was preparing to break the door. “ _Wait! He just got her to listen to him.”_ A few seconds, Riley snorted, but she didn’t volunteer whatever had caused the reaction.

MacGyver said something, and Jack distinctly heard the name Mark.

“ _He’s trying to convince her that… he’s not working with her brother.”_

Jack frowned. Why would Angela act like that? Unless she really wasn’t on something with her brother - but the flight booked, and the house… Given everything that had happened, it would make sense to Angela to try and get MacGyver inside and call her brother - or whoever was behind the attack.

“ _Ok. He convinced her to open the door and let you in. I don’t know, Jack. This is weird. I’m keeping an eye on her cellphone signal, to see if she’s going to call anyone.”_

The door was opened, and Angela Hendriks looked out. Her blonde hair was falling down over her face in a badly kept fringe, and her look was far from friendly. She looked young and nervous. She eyed Jack and said something to MacGyver, who replied quickly, and Jack didn’t know a translation to guess that he said Jack was a friend.

“And,” MacGyver said. “Can we continue this in English? My Dutch is a bit rusty,” he added, smiling. Angela looked at him suspiciously, “Ok, it’s not, but…” he pointed at Jack.

“Ja, ok” she said, “Come in.”

“So, what are you doing here?” Angela asked as soon as she’d closed the door. “I thought you told me that you’d stop doing what you were doing when you worked with my father.”

“I’m not, I swear,” MacGyver replied. “I can’t explain it to you. It’s complicated.”

“Really?” Angela said, “Then why are you hurt - limping like that?" She gestured at MacGyver's leg, "And what is he doing here?” she pointed at Jack. “I’m not stupid. I grew up in a family where I was exposed to this sort of people,” she waved enthusiastically in Jack’s direction - again, and wasn’t that annoying?

Riley laughed aloud. “ _Sorry Jack, but I can totally see where she’s coming from. You totally look like the muscle that people hire to be the bodyguard of a crazy family._ ”

Well, thanks, Riley.

“ _MacGyver, I am sorry for interrupting this heartfelt reunion,”_ Matty said, her voice terse. “ _But you’re not there to reminisce about your past._ ”

MacGyver cleared his throat. “Angela, we’re here because we think that your brother is planning something.”

Hendriks looked away. “Do you want to sit?” she asked, walking away from the hall. Jack and MacGyver followed her to the living room. “I can get you something to drink…”

Subtle. Jack didn’t know if that was Hendriks pretending to be clueless, or if the girl really was that foolish.

“We want to know about the flight you booked back to Amsterdam,” Jack said.

Hendriks flinched - and there it was, the guilty look on her face.

“I-I” she stuttered. “I did not… It wasn’t me,” she practically collapsed against a couch. “I didn’t buy it.”

“Then who did?” MacGyver asked.

“And who is paying for this house - who paid for your car?” Jack added. “It sure as hell wasn’t you.”

Hendriks put her hands over her face, and her body began to shake with sobs. MacGyver gave Jack a wide-eyed look, and Jack shrugged. He so didn’t know how to deal with people crying in front of him.

“ _Guys, come on,_ ” Matilda said.

“Hey,” MacGyver said, and sat down beside Angela. “Talk to me. What is going on? I can help you again.”

Angela froze, when she looked up, her eyes were red, but she looked angry. And young - but Jack had learned on the job to not trust faces that looked innocent. “You can’t help me,” she spat. “I’m not even sure you can help yourself.”

“I can help you. Look, I think that someone is continuing things from where your father stopped, and I think Mark is on this. I want to stop them, but I need your help. We think that whatever they’re going to do, it will happen here in Spain.”

“I know!” Angela said. “I mean, I thought something was wrong, when he told me about the flight ticket and told me to get ready to leave. But… what are you doing, Mac? How do _you_ know this, if you said you stopped doing those things?”

“Hey, kid,” Jack said, losing the thin thread of patience he’d been hanging on for the last five minutes. “We ask the questions here. You have this house and that car outside, which I know you can’t buy with what you make at that restaurant. You have a booked flight for two weeks, a flight out of a place where we know something bad is going to go down. So start by explaining that.”

Angela wiped the tears and gave Jack an angry look. “Fine. A few months after I got here, Mark found me. He started to send me money - told me he wasn’t going to let me live like that, because I am his sister. I tried to send the money back… but... He didn’t accept the money. And he told me that if I didn’t want his money, then I wasn’t family anymore, and then he asked if I really wanted to cut ties,” she trailed off. “He also told me that without him, the authorities would come for me, because of Father. So I just… used it - all the money. And then now he came up with the story about me leaving, he said that it wasn’t safe here, and that I should go back. I know he’s doing something.”

She paused, and looked at MacGyver, holding his hands in hers, and MacGyver’s eyes widened. “I know he’s doing something, but you have to believe that I don’t know what it is. I am not helping him. I didn’t get out once to go back. I’m just afraid.”

MacGyver nodded.

“And I wanted to tell someone,” Angela said. “But I didn’t know who. I was afraid someone would think that I was helping him, and who would believe me?”

“It’s okay,” MacGyver said. “I believe you.”

And goddamn, so did Jack. He’d seen too many people lying, or trying to lie, to tell that the girl was being honest.

“ _She’s telling the truth,_ ” Matty said through comms, as if reading his thoughts.

“Ok, Angela,” MacGyver said, squeezing the girl’s hands. “I promise you that I’ll help you - your brother won’t find you again, if that’s what you want. But right now I need you to _help us_. Do you remember anything else that Mark told you that can help us to find out where he is planning to attack?”

“I don’t know. He just told me to leave.”

“ _Uh… guys. There are two cars in a street near. Whoever they are, they are in a hurry,”_ Riley said. “ _Get the hell out now._ ”

“ _Jack, we’ve run the images of the cars that Riley sent us through face recognition, and we are positive that Mark Hendriks is among the people there. You have to capture him. This is your priority now. We need him alive,”_ Matty said.

The night just kept getting better and better. “Copy that, Matty.”

“We have to leave,” Jack said. “You’re coming with us,” he told Hendriks.

“Wait, what?” she said, and then started something in Dutch again. MacGyver replied, but this time Riley didn’t even bother with the translation.

Soon the sound of tires could be heard. MacGyver stood up and ran to the kitchen. Sounds of things clattering and being broken were coming from there.

“ _Guys!”_ Riley shouted.

“Wait! There’s no time!” MacGyver said. “Davis you have to come here.”

“ _What?! I’m not going there!_ ”

“Are you trying to get us killed?” Jack shouted because this had to be one of the worst ideas he’d ever heard.

“Didn’t you hear the sound of those tires?” MacGyver asked. “We aren’t running away from them in _that_ car. And it will be easier to get Mark and extract him safely.”

“Safely for who? You think it’s better to hole up ourselves here and wait to be killed?”

“Davis!” MacGyver screamed.

But MacGyver wasn’t listening to him. Instead, he was standing in the kitchen, looking around the opened cabinets.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Cataloguing,” MacGyver replied, then he said, in a more urgent tone, “Davis!”

Riley groaned, and then Jack heard the sound of the car door being forcefully shut. “ _Just call me Riley, for God’s sake! Davis sounds like I’m in high school again! And I’m coming, I just hope you know what you’re doing._ ”

“Cataloguing what?” Jack asked.

“What day is today?” MacGyver asked, running to the front door and opening it. Riley entered the house, carrying guns and magazines, and her rig.

“It’s the 16th. What does it matter?” Riley replied.

“Right. It means… today is a new moon. It’s going to be pretty dark. Davi-sorry, Riley, can you hack the power station of the city? I also need a phone.”

“Who are you people?” Angela - Jack had forgotten her, really - asked, eyeing the guns. She shouted something in Dutch, but the only person who could understand her ignored her.

“Ok. Cut off the power in this area of the city,” MacGyver said to Riley. “Angela, do you still use reading glasses? Good, I need then,” Hendriks went off somewhere else and then came back with the glasses. “And I need your phone,” he told Jack.

In Jack’s defence, he was confused as hell, and worried. So he gave MacGyver his phone - whoever MacGyver was going to call, Jack wanted him to do it fast, because he was sure that they didn’t have enough guns or ammo to hold against all the people coming for them.

Immediately, the other man pulled out a swiss army knife from his pocket, and smashed the phone against the wall. Jack thought he was going to use the phone to call someone, or… do something else, not to break it.

“Hey!” Jack said, wincing at the sight of his phone. “Man… my pictures from the Iron Maiden meet and greet are in this phone,” he complained. “My pictures with Bruce and Steve Harris!”

If they survived this, he was going to kill MacGyver.

MacGyver pulled the stuff out of the phone casing, dropping the parts that he - apparently - wouldn’t use. One of them, though, he threw at Jack, who caught the piece in the air. MacGyver used the knife to cut through a few wires of the phone. He went to the kitchen and picked something else there, and then he smashed the glasses on the table.

“What is this?” Jack asked, looking at the piece which used to be inside his phone.

“It’s the storage. Your photos are there.”

“Since you broke my phone, you could at least explain what the hell you’re doing with it.”

“The cameras from cellphones are limited by the proprietary operating systems, but if we remove that limitation, these cameras can be used to detect electromagnetic signals in the entire spectrum, including ultraviolet and infrar-”

“That’s not what I asked!”

MacGyver sighed.

“With no moonlight, and the power off, they will not see anything, but we will - or, you will. I’m making you night vision goggles.”

“Riley,” MacGyver called. “When they get in the house, you can cut off the power.”

“Alright, it’s all good, but when the lights go out and I start shooting them, they will shoot back because they will be able to tell where the fire is coming from because of the sound…” Jack said.

“Yeah, I know that,” MacGyver replied.

“So what you’re going to do about that?”

“I… haven’t thought about that yet. Here,” he pushed the goggles into Jack’s hand. “Angela, where do you keep your cleaning supplies? Do you have alcohol or kerosene?”

“And what happens when they use the lights from the cars?” Jack screamed.

“By then I hope you’ll have already taken out at least half of them,” he replied matter-of-factly. "If you're as good as Matty said, that shouldn't be a problem."

The nerve.

Before Jack could reply, he heard the noise of the cars stopping right in front of the house, and he ran to the door to take the guns, and then Riley pushed a phone on Jack’s face, a picture of a man - Mark Hendriks, he remembered from the briefing - on the screen. “Don’t forget that this one you can’t kill, Jack.”

Jack stared at the goggles. They looked ridiculous and he felt even more ridiculous knowing that they’d cost him his phone - it wasn’t brand new, but he’d bought them not even six months ago.

MacGyver and Hendriks came back - he was carrying a bowl with some liquid inside.

Someone knocked on the door, and Angela shouted something.

“Tell them you’re looking for the keys,” MacGyver instructed Hendriks, “But stay back here. When the lights go out, you hide in the room.”

MacGyver poured the liquid on the carpet, and then he turned the sofa and the couches to form barricades.

Then the four of them entered one of the rooms.

"Your windows don't have bars, right?" MacGyver asked.

"No, why?"

"Because I'm going to set the living room on fire, so we need an escape."

"You what?" Hendriks asked, mouth gaping, eyes wide. Jack shared that sentiment - whatever it was.

"Riley," MacGyver said. "You have the cameras outside, right?" Riley nodded. "When you see that most of them got in the house, you can cut off the power. And when you see the fire, you can bring it back."

** ** ** **

MacGyver’s plan - if that mess could even be called a plan - went better than Jack would have previously assumed.

With the advantage of being able to see, Jack took out four of the guys before they could realize what was going on. Which accounted for almost half of them, if both cars were packed to full capacity.

“Hey, Dalton, take off those goggles, unless you want to get blind,” MacGyver said.

What…

Two seconds later, the living room was on fire, flames rising from the carpet, licking the curtains. Someone still outside shot, and Jack ducked back into the room. Riley brought the power back.

“Come on,” Riley said, opening the window and jumping out, gun in hand. MacGyver helped Angela, and then he jumped, blanching when his feet touched down on the other side. Jack was the last one to get out.

Riley and Jack circled the house and found a few of Mark Hendriks's men. They took care of them, but there wasn't any sign of the Mark himself. They were going to take a look at the cars - maybe he was hurt, inside, trying to run away.

And then a shot rang.

They ran to the back of the house to find Mark Hendriks and MacGyver struggling on the floor, throwing punches and kicks at each other. Angela was sitting, her back against the wall, beneath the window they’d used to get out. A gun was on the floor, and

"Stop!" Jack said, as he and Riley pointed their guns at Mark.

MacGyver used the distraction to throw another punch. Hendriks staggered back and then spat something in Dutch.

"Kneel!" Jack shouted again. “Hands behind your head!”

Giving one last look at his sister, then at MacGyver, Mark dropped to the floor. Jack ran towards him and cuffed the guy, hands behind the back.

Angela's neck had a wound. Shit. A wound like that, bleeding so fast - the light blue dress the girl was using had a huge crimson stain on the front, and blood ran down her arm too. She was trying to stop the bleeding, hands shaking against her neck, breath coming in short, quick gasps.

That was the kind of injury that people might not survive even if they were shot inside a hospital, and could be carted to surgery immediately.

The girl had no chance.

She had a desperate, wild look in her eyes, and Jack thought that she knew exactly what was happening. Maybe had seen that happening to other people, before - what with her crazy, terrorist family.

MacGyver dropped to the floor in front of Angela, and he shrugged off his shirt, using it to keep pressure on the wound - but the fabric was also rapidly becoming pink, blood mixing with the water from the rain.

"Hey, let me," MacGyver said. Using the hand that wasn't keeping his shirt against the wound, he pried off Angela's hands from her neck. He kept holding one of her hands.

The girl replied something, her voice barely more than a whisper. Jack tried to listen, but he couldn't make out the words. He supposed it probably, again, wasn't even English.

Mark struggled in Jack's hold, shouted something, and Jack punched him.

"I don't know what you just said, dumbass, but how about you keep it quiet? Or I'm going to give you more than just one punch."

The guy had just killed his own sister, and Jack doubted that any words that came out of his mouth were motivated by remorse or regret - and not that it would have mattered, anyway.

Angela said something, and then she sobbed and grimaced, and belatedly Jack noticed that she was actually laughing, or trying to. The sight was garish. MacGyver smiled too, squeezing the girl’s hand.

They exchanged a few words, but soon Angela’s eyelids were dropping - Jack would estimate that she had already lost a quarter of her blood, and hypovolemic shock was setting in. Blood continued to seep through the shirt that MacGyver held against her neck.

MacGyver hung his head for a long time, then turned around, focusing on Mark. Jack prepared himself to… well, defend the piece of shit against an attack. He wouldn't stop MacGyver from roughing up the guy a bit, God knew that Jack would probably do that, if he were in his place. But they needed the guy alive - and that wasn't how Phoenix preferred to conduct things, anyway.

Having no idea of how MacGyver was going to react, Jack kept an eye trained on the gun that was on the floor. Whatever history there was between MacGyver and Angela Hendriks, Jack knew that the man could lash out now - he'd seen that happening a few times, both in the Army and CIA. Hell, any civillian could react like that in those situations, they were just easier to contain, but equally unpredictable.

But MacGyver didn't go for the gun, didn't as much as advance in Hendriks's direction. Instead, he leant against the wall, his bloody hands resting over his stomach, staining the white tank top he was wearing.

Matty’s voice came through the comms right then. MacGyver removed his earpiece threw it away. He looked at Jack, then at Riley and shook his head. Then he stood up and walked away.

“Yeah, we’ve got Mark Hendriks,” Jack replied Matty.

They had Hendriks. It was a successful mission, but it all felt very anticlimatic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, you should know that Iron Maiden doesn’t do Meet&Greets anymore, unfortunately. The last one they did was a bit on the “you have to know the right people to get in” basis, but I figured that Jack could have convinced Riley to hack people and get him a ticket if such an event happened again lol.  
> (Yes there are a lot of inconsistencies with the real world happening in chapter 5 and 6, but this is what I felt compelled to correct. Priorities, man *shrugs*.)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which some people get answers, others get threatened and there are creepy cultists.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I should clear this up, because I thought it might come up: the whole cult/terrorist group going is not based on the Codex plotline. I haven't watched S4 beyond the third or fourth episode (can't remember which one), so any similarity that might happen is coincidental and I wouldn't be aware of it, because I just know loosely what happens in S4. I just don't want to cause confusion in case you're trying to understand what is happening in the story and think that I might be borrowing things from that plotline...

Acceptable losses.

That was a concept that did not exist in Mac’s view.

And yet… it was not the first time he was directly responsible for one of those losses.

He glanced at Mark Hendriks, who was being held by Dalton, and looked away quickly. Now was not the time to think about the last thing Mark had said before Dalton had punched him. It wasn’t time to think about any of the things that his brain was throwing at him. There would be a time, and a place, for that. Or maybe it wouldn’t. Whatever.

Mac yanked the earpiece and threw it away - he didn’t want to hear Matilda Webber asking about Mark Hendriks, about whether their mission had been successful. It might be the behaviour of a coddled child, but right now he didn’t care.

He had only enough presence of mind to remember himself that he wasn’t alone. Dalton and Davis were there too. They were briefing Matty on everything that had happened, and didn’t seem to be focusing on him. He was grateful for that, and for the rain. Because he really didn’t want to have either agent noticing that he had _cried_ \- out in the field, of all places.

Shaking his head to clear his mind, he stood up, leg protesting against the sudden movement - the effect of the pain medication he’d taken to be able to function was passing now - and walked away.

Matty Webber had her “big picture” plans going on just fine. So had his father. James. _Oversight_.

And as a byproduct, so had Mac himself. This was just a loose thread from his past that he had to tie. Nothing more, nothing less. That particular lesson never stuck with him, and it wasn’t about to change now - on the contrary, if anything.

And in the distance, Mac heard the siren of a fire truck. Soon, the police would be there too. Which meant that they needed to leave.

He wiped his eyes and felt water enter his mouth with the movement. He could feel a faint taste of blood, and his stomach lurched because fuck, that was Angela’s blood. His phone buzzed, and mercifully that was enough to divert his attention from the metallic taste, before he could focus too muc on it.

**The funeral will be taken care of.**

And it was infuriating that despite everything, Matty had to act decently. It would be so much easier if she could just be flippant. If she just said “well, Angus, these things happen, and you need to stop being a _delusional child_ and learn how to deal with them.”

Mac would feel more justified, that way. But no, even though Matty and James worked together, and were focused on the same goal, their approaches weren’t identical. It just made Mac feel on the wrong, ignoring her and being unprofessional.

“We’re going to a safehouse in Portugal,” Dalton said. “We will interrogate Hendriks there.”

As always, they were on a tight schedule, Mac reminded himself. They still had a terrorist attack to stop - a bomb of his own making to stop, he reminded himself - and they still had no idea of how to reach whoever was behind this, and if Mark was even the one behind all of this. Mac would bet that he wasn’t, that Thyssen was the one planning the attack - behind bars, true, which only was more complicated, but not impossible.

Worse than that, now they have exposed themselves, and the attack could happen sooner than they had prepared for.

As he walked towards the car, he remembered that Murdoc, of all people, had been the one to alert them of what was happening, and that fact bothered him in ways that he couldn’t put into words.

But. Right. Don’t think about that now. Acknowledge the mess, acknowledge the blame, deal with those later.

They drove to the airport, Davis rode in the back with Mark, a gun in her hand and a hard look on her face were enough to keep him in silence the whole way. Mac went in the passenger seat, and while Dalton drove, Mac saw the man sneaking concerned glances at him. The other agent seemed on edge, and it was hard to understand why. Maybe he was one of those agents who took a long time to leave what happened in the field behind.

Mac wondered if, somehow, Davis had gotten her hands on his unredacted file. No one but Matty, Oversight, and a few selected people from Phoenix interrogation and psychology teams had access to that file, but Mac wasn’t sure if Davis wasn’t really able to get her hands on it. And he was sure that whatever she knew, Dalton did too. They were a tight team and worked as a unity.

All the shit that went down in Italy, and in Poland, and then after his extraction would be enough to make Dalton suspicious that Mac was going to have a damn mental breakdown now. And sure, maybe his history pointed in that direction, but Dalton didn’t know that Mac _was over_ that and so he was not a menace to the mission. He was fine.

Mac wouldn’t claim to know the other agent, but he doubted that Dalton was the kind of person who wouldn’t say anything if he had read a file like Mac’s. He wasn’t sure what the man would say, he just knew that there would be words.

Which meant that he was safe. Probably.

When they got to the jet, Mac sequestered himself to the back and took his pain meds - he didn’t particularly like needing those, but it was better to be safe than sorry in this situation, and he couldn’t afford to have another thing distracting him.

He changed his clothes - trying not to pay attention to the pink colour of the fabric of his shirt and then pretended to fall asleep. He was itching for a paperclip, but right now it didn’t feel appropriate to have one - things were too close, past and present amalgamated together.

** ** ** **

**Tilburg, around two years and seven months ago**

“What I’d like to know is why you were so enthusiastic to join us, MacGyver,” Geert Thyssen said. He opened a decorated golden box and pushed it to Mac’s side of the table. “Pick one,” he said, and the look that flashed in his grey eyes left no room to interpret that as anything less than an order.

Mac looked inside the box and saw that there a lot of… pills.

“I won’t lie,” Mac replied, picking one of the pills. He guessed that all of them were drugged, so it didn’t really matter. “It was the money.”

Thyssen tsked, looking at Mac with distaste.

“You don’t really believe in what we do here,” he said, “I told Jan so.”

Mac shrugged. “But I am willing to help you. That’s why he contacted me. I can give you exactly what you want. I like to see things explode, and you can give me the resources to do so.”

“So you say. But I don’t trust people who don’t believe in what we do here. I think you might decide to go working for the next person who pays better.”

Mac swallowed the pill, wondering if he was about to get hazed by a cultist group. He knew why this particular group had been chosen. Secret and closed off enough that they wouldn’t go around telling too much about him, but open enough and involved in other kinds of criminal activity that at least his name would get thrown around.

But right now the idea of going to these people seemed ludicrous, and he felt afraid of whatever was about to happen.

Mac paid attention to his body’s reactions. It didn’t look like there was anything happening. So, maybe it was nothing that acted fast. He’d had some experience with this, and all the training would prevent him from blurting out the real reason why he was there, even under the influence.

“But I trust this,” Geert said, pointing at the box. “We don’t allow the unworthy here, even if they are just on a contractual basis.”

And oh. _Oh_.

 _That_ wasn’t on his plans.

The good news was that he hadn’t been drugged with anything that would make him get so out of it and spill anything.

The bad news was that he had been poisoned. This was the initiation he’d been told about…

This was a job interview that just plain sucked.

“I had a son,” the man said. “He didn’t survive this, you know."

Mac wondered if the poison was already acting, if it had any effects on the nervous system, or if he was just feeling some kind of hysteria due to the current situation, because all he could think was that at least _James_ had never done something like poisoning him.

Or, not directly.

Thyssen continued saying something, but it sounded like Mac was underwater, and the man’s voice was muffled.

** ** ** **

**Amsterdam, around two years and six months ago**

“You are a stupid one.”

Mac looked away from the whiteboard he’d been writing. A blond young woman that he would guess was about his own age was leaning against the door.

“How is it that you say?” She continued. “All book smart, but not street smart.”

If only that was all there was to this whole mess… though, in a very weird way, she wasn’t wrong.

“You know that Thyssen is going to kill you when you finish whatever you’re doing, right?”

“And you’re the one he sent to make the threat?”

The woman laughed.

“I’m here to make sure that a small fortune my father is paying for your services won’t go to waste.”

“Your father?”

“Jan Hendriks. I’m Angela,” she sauntered into the room, looking at the formulas written on the board. “I’m also making sure that you didn’t cost me a perfectly fine pair of shoes for nothing.”

Mac looked blankly at her.

“I suspected you wouldn’t remember, but I was there, in Tilburg, after Geert did your initiation,” she said, nodding at his hands, which still trembled, even after an entire month. “You threw up on my shoes.”

The situation was… weird. Here was he, talking with the daughter of a madman who wanted to play God and he had joined a damned _cult_ , was in the process of creating a weapon for said madman.

His life suddenly looked a lot like one of Bozer’s scripts.

The memory of his friend caused a pang on his chest, but he killed that train of thought as soon as it appeared, and quickly refocused on the equations on the whiteboard.

He tried to remember what had happened to him during the event Angela had mentioned, but his memories of that week were hazy at best, and just a void at worst. He’d come to terms with what happened, but it still bothered him that he didn’t remember things. It was better to just… not think about it.

And he had no idea what Angela was doing here. Was she spying on him for her father?

But as the days passed, blending into weeks, and Angela kept coming back to talk, Mac wasn’t sure anymore of what was going on. The girl made a lot of questions, and Mac actually indulged her curiosity - explaining this or that chemistry or physics concepts in great detail. He always left out the application of those concepts, though he thought that she knew what he was doing, anyway.

He lived in the same house as the Hendriks and their other associates - no one had told him that he couldn’t leave the place, but he was sure that if he tried he would be escorted back inside. Though he wasn’t really a part of whatever creepier things went on in that house, he was aware of the moments when they happened.

One night, five months after he’d come to the house, there was a commotion. Mac was in the office/lab. People were shouting, and he knew enough of the language to understand that Angela had been pleading for the life of a guy.

“ _Father, please! He didn’t know.”_

 _“No, he didn’t,_ ” someone replied - and Mac recognized that voice. It wasn’t Angela’s father, but Geert Thyssen. “ _But_ you _knew better, Angela._ ”

“ _Father! You will let this happen?”_

 _“Let this happen?”_ Jan replied, this time, voice cold and unforgiving. “ _I’ll do it myself.”_

 _“I_ love _him. Please don’t,”_ Angela Hendriks’s voice trembled.

There was a laugh and then the sound of a hand hitting flesh, and Mac stopped what he was doing, putting down the flasks where it was safe. The door was slightly ajar, just enough for him to see outside.

Angela was sitting on the floor, supporting the body of an unconscious young man on her lap. His ginger hair was dark with blood, which also painted the floor. She had a red mark in the shape of a hand on her cheek. Looming over her was her father, and beside him, Thyssen. In the back there were a few other men whose name Mac didn’t know.

 _“This ends here. This is the last time I’ll try to teach you this lesson._ ”

Then Hendriks pulled the ginger off Angela’s arms and threw him on the floor, violently - his head connected with the surface making a low cracking noise. Jan pulled a knife and, when he tried to stab the man, Angela held it off by the blade. Mercilessly, Jan pulled the knife out of her grasp, making her grunt in pain as it sliced through the palm of her hand.

Pushing his daughter away, Jan knelt and struck the man. Hendriks’s body blocked Mac’s vision, but Angela’s wail was enough to tell him what had happened.

One of the nameless men grabbed the body, dragging it away, and as Thyssen and Hendriks started in the direction of the hall that led to the lab, Mac ran back to the bench.

Angela disappeared for a few weeks after that, and when she finally reappeared, something had changed. The nature of her questions changed, becoming personal and accusing. Mac didn’t mind that, exactly, even if it felt like a kind of loss to not have that semblance of normalcy in his life anymore. But that was bound to happen, sooner or later. All things considered, maybe sooner was better.

And although he didn’t mind the questions, he didn’t answer them, either.

** ** ** **

**Present day, Portugal**

They landed in a private airport in Lisbon, and after a short drive, they got to the safehouse. The place looked like a normal house, there were a few decorations - portraits, small statues, that sort of thing. The living room had a medium-sized shelf with books and CDs.

"Look at this… whoever picked these has terrible taste in music," Dalton said, eyeing the CDs. "No one’s playing this shit while I’m here,” he added, picking one of the albums and shaking his head. “If Matty gave me a pay raise I could do a much better job with the Phoenix safe houses."

"Yeah," Davis replied. "And all the safe houses would end up with a Telly Savalas portrait hanging on their living room wall."

"You talk like that's a bad thing."

Mac tuned out the conversation. It was odd, seeing that easy camaraderie between the two agents, and he wondered if he would ever be in a team like that. Maybe if he went to another agency, with an even more redacted file, starting all over. Well, if he still continued in intelligence after everything was said and done - and that was being generous and considering that he would survive in the end. Besides, he'd been acting alone for so long, and working with others - on the field - seemed somewhat unnatural. Not necessarily bad, if he was being honest, but strange. Even in these consulting missions that he was going on with different Phoenix teams, he wasn’t really in a team, he was just… there.

Dalton took Mark Hendriks to the basement, leaving him in a small, improvised office that would serve as an interrogation room. Or rather, it wasn’t that much of an improvisation, considering the soundproofed walls.

They did a quick debrief with Matty - the real, detailed one would need to wait the end of the mission.

If they ended up not getting any useful information from Hendriks, the last lead, for now, was Thyssen - and the Director herself was going to interrogate him the next day in prison.

Before proceeding with the interrogation, Mac took a quick shower and changed the dressing on his leg. The area around the exit wound was reddened and a bit hot to the touch, and he decided to double the dose of the anti-inflammatory he had been prescribed. He found a stash of granola bars and cookies in the kitchen, and he ate some of them with water. Then he went looking for Dalton and Davies.

The agents were still in the living room, they didn’t seem to be discussing the mission, even though they were talking.

“Hey, MacGyver,” Dalton said, when he spotted Mac near the door. “Matty contacted us just before going on and talking with Thyssen - apparently she pulled some strings and got to chat with the guy a few hours earlier than planned. We were waiting for you to go over the info we have and plan how we are going to talk with Hendriks."

“I’m still running through the info on shipments, haven’t been lucky yet. We just should assume that the explosives are here. I could use some help - I’m running out of ideas of where to look,” Davis said.

“You should have called me earlier,” Mac said.

Davis shrugged, and Dalton said, “It looked like you needed some time.”

Mac narrowed his eyes, wondering if he was being humoured by the agents. Maybe the conversation he’d had with them had some effect, or maybe they were just treating him like some unstable person after what had happened, like he needed pity or something.

“What have you got already?” Mac asked Davis, moving closer to where she and Dalton were sitting.

“The trail of the shipment of SYBR Green is all scattered,” she pointed at the screen, where a map of Spain with a dozen red points appeared. “Best info I could track is that it was distributed to a dozen labs in Spain - but I don’t think that’s what happened.”

“Yeah, it’s not… Riley, can you get access to the list of visitors Thyssen has had since he was arrested?”

“I’ll check that.”

“Did any of you talk with Hendriks already?”

“No,” Dalton replied. “As I said, we were waiting for you, since you know the guy, that might be helpful."

“Oh, and I almost forgot,” Davis said, handing Mac her phone. “Pick something.”

Mac looked at the screen, realizing that a food delivery app was opened. He frowned, scrolling through the list of options.

“Careful there, Riles, you saw what happened when I gave him my phone,” Dalton said.

"At least I have backups of all my photos," the woman replied.

Mac almost startled at that. Their tone was, well, it sounded like they were joking, and he didn't know where that was coming from, and he wasn’t even sure if he was included in the conversation, because they didn't get along. Had they actually noticed how much Angela's death had affected him? He thought not, but there had to be an explanation for their behaviour. And why would they even care about that, anyway?

Without thinking much, Mac picked the first thing that seemed mildly appetising in the picture. It was not like he was going to eat much anyway.

"So, here we've got the list of people who visited Thyssen," Davis said. "A total of zero people."

"So… our friend in the basement goes back to being our best lead - I can't see that Matty is going to get anything useful from Thyssen, if he had no way of communicating with people outside," Dalton said.

"Let's go talk with Hendriks then," Mac said, turning around and heading for the basement.

"Hey!" He heard Dalton calling, and the sound of steps following him. Before he got to the stairs, the other man was in front of him. "Are you sure that all you're gonna do is talk?"

Mac sighed. So that's what was happening. Davis and Dalton had been expecting him to blow up and… what? Hit Mark? Torture him?

"Yes, all I'm gonna do is talk," Mac replied. "I won't beat him up," he added. The other man didn't seem convinced and was still eyeing Mac with suspicion. "Look, Dalton, that is not really my… thing. We are running out of time, and I may not have your training and experience on this, but I know these people, personally. All I will do is talk."

Mac needed to find where the attack would happen, because otherwise a bomb that he created would very likely go off, and he would be responsible for thousands of deaths, and he didn't want to even contemplate that possibility.

He didn't think that Dalton would be convinced by that, though. Hell, only two people in the world would.

"You can come with me, if you want to make sure I won't hurt him."

Dalton shrugged and turned away, climbing down the stairs. "I know how shitty it is to see people dying in the field. I wouldn't blame ya if you did want to beat up a guy who killed his own sister - and whatever she was to you, I get that you didn't want that for her."

Dalton paused and Mac looked up, seeing that the man had an expression that he couldn’t identify on his face.

"Look. I'm gonna be real honest now. Riley got your file. I read it before the briefing.”

Mac froze, while his heart started rabbiting inside his chest. So he had been right - Dalton would not stay silent after reading his file, and that was why he was acting weird. But before he could start to think and overthink what that meant, Dalton continued.

"There was black ink enough to redact the files of a small army."

Suppressing a relieved sigh, Mac stared expectantly - Dalton didn't seem to be finished.

"And what you said back there in the war room is true. It's hard to work with someone you don't trust. And when we go in that room," he pointed at the door, "we can't show that son of a bitch that we aren't on the same page, or he will use that to his advantage. So, I'm coming clean here - I don't trust you completely, but I don't think a merciless terrorist would try and get that girl away from her crappy family. And you seem keen on stopping this attack, I don't think you'd be able to pull off fooling me, Riley, Matty, _and_ whoever is Oversight. For now, I can work with that."

Mac blinked, not knowing how to reply to that. He scrambled his memory, trying to remember exactly what his redacted file even looked like. It certainly mentioned Italy. He wanted to laugh at the commentary about Oversight.

"That deal we made wasn't just for show. I don't go around saying shit I don't mean. If you think you can make the guy talk, then we will give a shot at that. I see no harm. But this mission is not yours alone - it's mine, and Riley's too. So you talk to us before you do things - whether you're going to break my phone, or explode a fire extinguisher, or set a house on fire, or interrogate a mad cultist. Capisce?"

At first, Mac wanted to baulk at that. Dalton wasn't his boss, and he didn't owe him explanations. Furthermore, it wasn't Dalton who had created a bomb that was about to explode, so this mission was, in fact, more significant for Mac.

He didn't say any of those things, though. If the other man was extending an olive branch, he wouldn't refuse it. Moreover, Dalton was right, they needed to work together, or Mark would jump at the opportunity to use any sign of weaknesses against them.

“By the way, you can drop the whole Dalton thing, we are not in the Army or something like that.”

Mac nodded, and because he didn’t want the other man getting the idea of calling him by his first name, he said, “You can call me Mac,” he would need to remember to tell Davis the same, and to stop calling her Davis in his head before he slipped. It was a small thing, but if there was one thing he always avoided was not calling people the way the wanted to be called.

Dalton - Jack - gave him a look, “Don’t like your first name that much, huh? I can’t say I blame you,” he paused. “It kinda sounds like a new special at Carl’s Jr.”

From the way he said it, Mac guessed that he’d been waiting for _ages_ to say something like that.

** ** ** **

Mac had thought that he’d buried what happened a few hours ago out of reach, but seeing Hendriks there let him know that he wasn’t, in fact, as in control as he would have liked. Instead of jumping directly to the talking and questioning, he stood against the door, hands in his pockets, for a few minutes. It eventually worked, and he could detect the distance and the calm his father taught him.

“Mark,” Mac said, pushing a chair and sitting down. “It’s been what? More than a year, almost two, right?” Hendriks said nothing, just looked at Mac with anger and hatred like Mac had done something to him. “What have you been doing all this time?”

“Trying to finish what your crazy dad started, right?” Dalton - Jack - said.

“ _Like you understand what we do!_ ” Hendriks spat, in Dutch.

“Hey, hey, pal, listen here. Let’s keep this in a language that everyone here understands, how about that? You wanna choose another one, then you pick between Russian, French or Portuguese,” and, then turning to Mac, he asked, “what languages do you speak, again, Mac?”

“None of those,” Mac said. He could scrap by some rudimentary Russian, and get the basic context of a text in Portuguese because of his Italian, spoken French was just hopeless.

“See?” Jack said, waving. “I’m sure your folks taught you more than creepy cultist shit, so let’s just do things the polite way before I make you unable to talk at all. That’s a good deal if I’ve ever seen one.”

Hendriks sneered. “I see that you are trying to finish what you started,” he told Mac, “Kill my entire family. I always told Father that he shouldn’t trust you, that you would betray us, and that you were putting ideas in Angela’s head. Go ahead, kill me, you can’t stop anything.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Mac said, crossing his arms. “I didn’t get anyone in your family killed,” and he hoped no one in the room could tell what a fat lie that was, because yeah, he had got Angela killed, there was no denying that. “ _You_ shot her. And your parents, that night? Do you know who did it?

“Your buddy, Nathan Brown. The guy you all trusted to manage the money, who had information about everything that happened in the family. How else do you think the CIA was able to find us when we were checking the shipments?”

“That’s a lie! If Brown was a traitor, why did he die that night? It was _you_ who escaped.”

“Well, you weren’t there, were you? Your father didn’t trust you to be there. Do you know who shot them?”

“Bet you can guess that,” Jack said.

“Whatever the CIA had planned, it went sideways. Nathan Brown broke his cover, shot your mother first, then your father.”

Saying those things, pressing those points, made Mac feel like he was undercover all over again. It wasn’t the most unpleasant thing he’d had to do while undercover, but still… using something like that in an interrogation hit too close to home, and it bothered him a bit how easily the words just… tumbled out of his mouth.

It was like, at the heart of things, he truly was like that.

** ** ** **

**Amsterdam, two years ago**

The main hall of the house was opulent. A chandelier was hanging from the ceiling, it was decorated with crystals, and Mac was focused on them, thinking of the angle of refraction of the light on each face of the crystals, while the weight of the box on his hands pulled him under.

Mac had hoped he would be able to stay out of this, but apparently, he would have no such luck. Maybe he was selling too well the role of someone who was in for the money, but also curious about the rest.

He stared at the box of pills in his hands. Might as well sell his whole soul.

But then Geert Thyssen appeared, ripping the box out of his hands and handing it to someone else - a dark-haired man, a bit younger than Mac himself. Thyssen shook his head when Jan Hendriks opened his mouth to say something.

Well, garnering Thyssen's dislike was certainly inconvenient, all things considered, but right now all that Mac could feel was a relief for that.

He still would need to watch, though.

There was a small group of people in today, most of them were young, and Mac was at a loss about why someone would do something so dumb as to join a brainwashing cult that had an initiation with a survival rate lower than sixty percent.

Sure, maybe he was doing something even dumber, and those people didn't know about what was about to go down, but still…

Each person accepted one pill, and some of them were even smiling and laughing while they did it. Maybe they thought they would get high, or something like that.

They were in for a surprise.

The night went long, and one by one, those people fell down, writhing in pain on the floor, cursing and crying. Mac remembered Thyssen talking about how his own son had gone through this same thing - and had not survived. The man had seemed actually ashamed of that, even if he tried to hide it beneath layers of arrogance and threats.

His mission was not to bring these people down, Mac reminded himself. They were just the bridge to the real goal, but right now, he had to refrain himself from doing something. Stand and watch went against every one of his instincts, and not for the first time, he doubted his ability to finish things, if that meant just not acting.

One of the men on the floor gave a particularly loud shout, and Mac heard someone laugh, behind him. Mark Hendriks and another guy were talking and making fun of what was happening. When he caught Mac looking, the man waved.

"You are the one who is in charge of that big project, aren't you?" The guy asked, and though his Dutch was good, or at least much better than Mac’s, he had a faint accent - his uvular trills sounded a bit off - and Mac didn’t have a lot of difficulties to place it - his own accent was similar, only much stronger.

Hendriks recruited people from all over the world, this guy was just the first American he'd met so far.

"I am," Mac said.

"I'm glad to meet you. Jan has been telling me some great things about you and your project." Beside the man, Mark grimaced and walked away. "I'm Nathan."

"Angus," Mac replied, and by now he used his first name like that without blinking. "So… what do you do in the group?"

Nathan opened his arms. "A little bit of everything. Mostly, I manage the money."

Oh.

"I'm not that much interested in this," he added, nodding at the people on the floor. "It can get messy, and cleaning up is a nightmare, for various reasons - I've been to a few. But what happens here is necessary, so I help when I can."

Mac nodded. "I'm still getting used to this," he said, lowering his voice. "But I enjoy the freedom this group has given me to be creative. And the necessary resources."

Nathan smirked. "When I started at this, I was a bit scared. Went through initiation and I thought about running away. But as time passed, I found a family here, you know? Best decision I've ever made was staying."

Mac wanted to laugh at that. Family? By what abominable standards was that a family? And that was coming from someone who had propriety to talk about messed up families.

"And you can have that too," Nathan continued. At Mac's blank stare, he added. "Angela."

And now that. He wasn't interested in the girl, at all, though he could see how an outsider would think so. The fact was that he, in some way, saw himself in the girl. She was the only person there who didn't seem to be completely brainwashed, and he just wanted to help her in some way, even if it wasn’t a very significative one.

"I am not interested in her," Mac replied.

"Come on, Angus. You don't need to be scared just because she is Jan's daughter. If you succeed in your project, I am sure he will have nothing against you and her together. I know you heard about what happened to her last boyfriend, but he wasn't part of the group, that's why Jan had to do that. You don't need to worry about meeting the same fate."

Deciding quickly on the best way to follow up that commentary, Mac smiled and feigned chagrin. "It is a relief to hear that."

Nathan laughed. "I’m sure.”

Later that night, Mac had had to help cleaning up the place - the kind of cleaning that involved not mops and buckets, but carrying the bodies of people who didn’t make through the first hours of poisoning.

** ** ** **

**Present day, Portugal**

“I’m impressed - no, I really am - that you were the one who was able to restart things,” Mac said. “How did you do it?”

Hendriks didn’t reply.

“From what I was told, you aren’t exactly brilliant,” Jack said. “I bet you feel pretty good about yourself with pulling that off, huh?”

“I always thought that if anyone would have continued things, it would have been Thyssen.”

Mark rolled his eyes. “He couldn’t even keep himself out of prison.”

“And neither could you, but if you tell us where the attack will happen, we can arrange you a deal.”

“I want no deal with you. And you won’t be able to stop the attack. I found someone to finish your bomb, someone better.”

“Really?” Mac asked, trying to appear bored, even as concern began to make itself known. “I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s the same man who Father was negotiating with before you appeared. He took what you started and made it better, unstoppable.”

Mac tried to remember who had been working with Hendriks before he was recruited but couldn’t remember if he ever knew that information. Probably not, but he would need to confirm it with Matty.

Thinking back to what Hendriks had said, Mac realized that he had an idea of how to get what he needed. If it hit a bit too close to home, he ignored that.

“Did he go through initiation, Mark?” Hendriks looked away, and that was all the answer Mac needed. “He didn’t,” crossing his arms in front of his chest, he continued. “What would your father say about that?”

Mark grimaced but still didn’t reply.

“You pretend that you are so upset about his death, and here you are, undoing all that he built in life.”

“It is not like you were in the group for more than money.”

“You’re right,” Mac agreed with a shrug. “And you are in this for what, Mark? You are trying to carry on the legacy of a man who never gave you the chance to prove yourself. He took Angela to that meeting, he took _me_ , and he even let the man who killed him be there that night. Why weren’t _you_ there?”

“I am doing something much greater than he ever did.”

“Pity your old man isn’t here to see that,” Dalton said. “And you’re going to rot in prison for nothing. Seems like a pretty dumb way of dealing with family issues.”

That reminded Mac of Murdoc talking about his “daddy issues” and he mentally cringed. Riley and Jack had heard all of that and although Murdoc was, in a way, wildly off in his guess, on the other side, he also was spot on.

“We are going to let you think about it for some time,” Dalton said, standing up.

Mac didn’t know what the other agent was on about, but he followed him when he left the room - avoid showing that they were people who were only tolerating to work together.

As soon as the door closed behind them, Jack turned to Mac with an assessing look.

“Are you going through Phoenix training?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Because you can do a half-decent interrogation, and I don’t think that was your role when you were back working with those guys, or in Poland,” he narrowed his eyes, “and you know your way around the lingo and the protocols used in the agency, and in intelligence in general.”

“So?”

Mac had the feeling that he knew exactly where this conversation was going on. It wasn’t like he could keep a secret forever working with spies, and really, the blame was on his father for even coming up with that. Matty would just have to do damage control - Mac just didn’t know if he would like how that would be done.

“You know, I’ve been wondering why you are at Phoenix, and this one thing never crossed my mind until now. Because you’re a bit too young to have already been in deep cover, and because that isn’t the sort of thing we do much at Phoenix. But that’s it. You were undercover.”

Jack wasn’t asking, and Mac thought it would be just useless to try to lie. Come to think of it, likely no one had put two and two together before because Mac had only gone on short missions until now. It figured that at the first longer assignment someone would come to the right conclusion.

“What I don’t understand is why all this secrecy within the agency.”

Mac stared and shrugged. “Classified.”

That word was a bit like a master key, only it served more to lock doors instead of opening them.

Dalton snorted, “Of course,” and he muttered something that Mac couldn’t understand well, but he heard Matty’s name. “How old are you even?” Dalton asked. “And how old were you when you started on this? What the hell is Phoenix doing now, recruiting people in kindergarten to put them undercover?”

“It was an exceptional case,” Mac said and left at that. “Is that why you interrupted the interrogation? Can we go back to it now?”

“No, no!” Dalton said, stepping in front of the door. “This guy is the kind that we should let marinate a bit more to get something out of him. I wouldn’t have stopped an interrogation just to ask about your life. You may have the training, but I bet you weren’t through many interrogations in your life, so listen to me on this.”

Mac nodded reluctantly and took his phone out of his pocket and sent a message to Matty. She probably was still talking to Thyssen, so it would take some time for a reply.

 **Dalton knows**.

They waited a bit more than an hour before going back to talking to Mark. While they were waiting, the food that Riley ordered was delivered, but Mac just mostly picked at his. The situation was super awkward, _he_ felt awkward. Being undercover was one thing, once he was past the point where he could compartmentalise and just do what he needed to keep the cover he could be confident, even if he hated whatever he needed to do, but that wasn’t the case now.

At one point, Matty replied to his message.

**He knows exactly what?**

Yeah, should have explained that better.

**That I was undercover.**

**In the Netherlands, that is.**

It didn’t take more than ten seconds for the next reply.

**I see. I will deal with this.**

Mac sighed, and Riley and Jack stared at him. Dalton was about to say something, but then Matty called them.

“Hey Matty,” Dalton said.

“ _How did Hendriks’ interrogation go_?” Matty asked.

“We got nothing about the location yet,” Mac replied. “But he admitted that he is behind it.”

“Yeah, we are letting the guy think a bit about his options. I take it your chat with Thyssen didn’t go well?”

“ _No, he doesn’t know anything about the attack. Well, then you people get the location out of Hendriks. And fast_.”

“Matty, there was one thing. Mark said that he found someone to finish my bomb, and that it was the same person who was working with his father before me. Do we know who that was?”

“ _No. But I’ll look into it. Now you all stop eating and go get answers._ ”

“How do you even know that—” Davis started.

“ _I heard someone chewing. It was probably you, Riley._ ”

They went back to the basement, and in the end, it didn’t take a lot of prodding to convince Mark to give up the location of the bomb, so Jack had been right on the call of letting the man think a bit about his options.

“But you won’t be able to stop it, you know?” Mark said after giving up the location. “The man I hired hated that you got involved in his business, so this became a question of honour for him.”

“Talking about honour while trying to kill people, I think you need a dictionary, man,” Dalton said.

“So what is going to happen is that you will die as you should have died long ago.”

“Well, you’d better hope that isn’t the case,” Mac replied. “Because if that bomb goes off, your deal with my boss is cancelled. I’ll be dead, but you will probably be much worse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thoughts?

**Author's Note:**

> If you got an email saying I posted this today (26/02/2021), know that I did not update anything. I was just messing with an anonymous collection and didn't know that taking my work off anonymous would alert people who are subscribed to me!  
> I'm really sorry (and embarrassed LMAO I swear I know how to use computers.)


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